I don’t really want to start a skirmish in the blog wars, but I can’t quite figure out what Dan Chmielewski is getting at in his defense yesterday of the OC Register’s paywall (which I didn’t see until today.) He seems to be defending two primary propositions:
(1) that it makes sense that the Register should want a paywall, and
(2) that the Register has the right to set up such a paywall.
OK — I concede both points. As a critic of the paywall — or, as I have called it, the wonderwall — I’ve never said that I didn’t understand why they’d want it or that I thought they didn’t have a right to do it. I’m not sure where Dan C. got that impression from any of the paywall’s critics. Instead, my criticisms have focused in two other areas:
(1) ain’t gonna work
(2) putting a price on basic community information creates problems
I’ll make another concession: the second of these problems is not the Register’s problem to address; it’s a problem for our society as a whole. Collectively, we’re worse off with a less-informed citizenry. The Register’s being freely accessible doesn’t necessarily provide us with a well-informed citizenry, but even their relative monopoly over much news reporting leaves us better off than otherwise. (I think, though, that there’s a strong argument to be made that walling off their editorials while leaving the news content free would leave us with a better-informed citizenry than we had before the paywall. I wish that that were merely a clever joke.)
So let’s take a look at the eight paragraphs of Dan’s editorial and try to figure out where it’s coming from.
Dan explains that companies need income to provide jobs to provide services to customers. OK so far. And if people are able to get that service for free, the company — employment, service quality — suffers. OK. And if it finds a way “to charge for what once was free, and customers revolt…actually being offended at being asked to pay.” Whoa.
I’m not offended by the Register putting up a paywall. I’m just not going to pay. Some of this may be principle, I suppose; most of it is simply that I have better things to do with my limited money than to give them $365/year for a product that I don’t deem to be worth it. If others — Dan, Cynthia Ward, Geoff West — want to pay, fine. I’m just not going to be guilt-tripped by them into thinking that my refusal to pay and actively working around their embargo of news is “destroying journalism.” (When it comes to “destroying journalism,” nothing I could do for the entire rest of my life could match the damage done by even a month of the Register’s editorial page. Ha ha — joke there.)
Some customers seem to be offended by their perception that what the Register offers for these premium prices is the same old stuff, without improvements in proofreading, display, content, etc. (You can read the disgruntled comments yourself in those venues that allow them.) But dissatisfaction with the quality of a product isn’t the same as dissatisfaction with the mere that that product is being sold!
Dan then describes non-paying readers as “freeloaders.” This seems … illiberal. As a taxpayer, I pay for, among other things, educating members of the public to the point where they can (hopefully) read the newspaper in the first place; my tax money goes to government advertising in the paper, to roads that allow it to transport newsprint and ink in and finished product out, and much more. Dan’s argument is along the lines of (ed. note: I had accidentally left out those bolded words and Dan rightly called me on it, though I presume he’d deny even this much) one that — and I’d like to think that he simply didn’t think through the implications, rather than actually believing this — we should get rid of free public libraries because they undercut the market for books, videos, and magazines. Conservatives have actually made that sort of argument; liberals don’t.
(Sudden thought: I wonder how reactions to the payroll vary across lines of income. Hmmm, who besides the Register has the resources to do a survey?)
More generally, the extirpation from one’s analysis of everything that the public has previously done to make the Register’s business plan possible is a conservative folly, unworthy of Dan. My favorite example of this is when Sen. Rick Santorum tried, on behalf of his Pennsylvania constituent Accu-Weather, to get the National Weather Service to stop producing weather reports for free because they were undercutting the market for paid services. I hope I don’t have to explain why I reject that analysis, which overlooks matters such as “who put up the bloody satellites in the first place?”, because someone told me recently that I should use less profanity online.
Dan says that he loves newspapers and asserts that the Register has every right to put up a paywall. I agree. Then he says:
“If you want local news, subscribe to the Register or any number of community weeklies they publish. It’s called the free market that so many Republicans, Conservatives and Libertarians subscribe to over and over again.”
No, that’s not what the free market is; the free market, for example, allows workarounds of the sort that have damaged and ruined many other newspaper paywalls. But the more basic problem is that most people cannot easily fork over $365/year for something, even if it’s good. In OC, perhaps a higher proportion can do so than most, which explains why this is a good target for a high-priced paywall plan. But if you (generalized “you,” not Dan specifically) don’t know people for whom $365/year is a lot of money, I think that you need to get out more. I have no problem with people wanting “local news” and not wanting to pay more money than I can afford. (What are some workarounds? How about a paywall for those features — travel, society, business, real estate, etc. — that are of interest primarily to the people who can afford it? That’s still imperfect — but it would have a much lower social cost.)
Dan notes that once upon a time people paid for internet access via Compuserve and AOL — and we liked it! Well, no — some people paid, but many many many did not, and that was in a time with much more income equality than we have now. People not being able to pay a reasonable price for news is an unnoticed cost of social stratification.
Dan suggests that “[t]he way to change a paper is whether or not you subscribe to it or partonize their advertisers or use the paper’s promotional products (coupons for example) that show value to advertisers.” I honestly don’t expect that the Register would change in response to my, or every other liberal in OC, paying for it. The people with more money than we have in this county like it the way it is. For us, it’s take it or leave it.
Dan concludes — and Cynthia and Geoff have echoed the sentiment here:
[I]f you want to read the Register online, then buy it; Pay for the product like you expect your company’s customers will pay for the product you help produce. The more subscriptions mean more readers. More readers means great value for advertisers and more money coming in to hire new reporters or experienced ones. But don’t complain; the Register has every right in the free market to charge for their work and their product.
Since when is “don’t complain” part of the free market?
Stepping back a bit, the dialogue that I and others (like my apparent-semi-ally-on-this-issue Gustavo Arellano in the Weekly) are having with the Register is not so much about whether they have the right to implement a wonderwall, but how they should do so. There are lots of ways to do it, and the Register’s is the most draconian in the business as well as among (perhaps the) most expensive among generalist daily newspapers. They didn’t have to choose that path. There are ways to do so that will probably help both them and the public, such as allowing access to low cost a la carte articles (and yes, I know about the $2 daily pass) and to “tear that wall down” when it comes to emerging news of great local public interest, such as the recent search and rescue in Trabuco Canyon. Giving them that feedback — “complaining,” in other words — is good. The feedback helps them as they navigate through the unexplored swamp that they’ve entered.
Meanwhile, as my own contribution to journalism, I’m trying to chart the effect of the paywall on the Register‘s popularity. A new installment isn’t due until Friday, but I decided to check early today.
Last Friday, the Register had the 5994th most popular website in the world. Today: it’s rank is 6030, nine slots below the 6021 it held on the day when the wonderwall was raised. It’s too early to say for sure what’s going on — and clearly, for its owners, the importance of an increase in subscriptions would more than outweigh some decline in online popularity– but maybe not too early to suspect. (OJB, by contrast, has risen about 70,000 spots in the past week to 719,065th. Thanks, Register?)
I hope that my noting this doesn’t seem out of line. The free flow of accurate information is good, right?
A sign of the times Greg….it is called survival. Paper subscriptions have fallen off…due to “free” internet access……so their answer…as was other major newspapers (NY Times, WA Post, etc.)…is to charge for internet access….. While I can’t afford this…I understand why they are choosing to do so.
I honestly don’t want to provide money to a right slanted publication anyhow…….
As I say, I understand it too. I just don’t think it will work, I don’t think that we recognize the social costs, and I think that there are better ways of their doing it if they must do so at all.
It’s certainly not going to work at $365 per year. That is preposterously overpriced. Especially for a “newspaper” that just isn’t very good.
Any predictions on how long it takes for the price to come down dramatically?
Hmmm — perhaps you can help me with the wording of the Weekend Open Thread, where I might ask that!
How about “Preposterously Pricey Paywall Peeves”?
I meant with the body of the story — how we’d phrase a contest to guess the date that they ratchet it down. (I can usually handle headlines.)
“I don’t really want to start a skirmish in the blog wars………” sure you do. that’s why you posted this. At least try to tell the truth
No matter what one thinks: Left, Right, Middlle Left, EXTREME Left whatever …………… I love the fact that Dan, in his suborn view of things refuses to post here.
Like a spoiled kid (IRVINE BASH) Dan does not post anywhere but his protected blog.
The Register SUCKS. Subscribe if you want to. Don’t if you don;’t.
If people are concerned about the “poor” reading the paper, drop the newsstand price to a Quarter (which they did) and circulation among Santa Anan’s rose……..3%.
CLOSE TO ZERO. If you can’t read English you won’t buy a paper in English.
No, gormless — what I wanted to do was to rebut his column. A blog war (more likely, skirmish) may come from that, but it’s not what I sought.
I don’t begrudge Dan not posting here. It’s his choice.
I presume that there are statistics out there that show what percentage of Santa Ana residents read English. I wouldn’t hazard a guess other than that whatever your guess is would probably be low.
Greg —
Interesting post and a good exchange in email. I’ll note the ads in the right hand side of this blog for Vern’s piano playing (which is excellent) and your law firm, as well as ShirtHood.com and Mr. Dalati’s Insurance company (in addition to a couple of banner PSAs) as evidence that advertising seeks an audience. And while our blogs don’t have the ad revenue of the Register or OC Weekly, its nice to cover the basic expenses of providing this service.
As far as “Nameless” goes, I laughed at his/her use of the term “suborn.” Very Mafioso. Sorry, I don’t do that. And I do post on Voice of OC, OC Weekly and OC Political, but not regularly. So that pretty much shoots holes in that theory. Typically, once I post, I rarely revisit the thread. Frankly, I’ve been very busy with several new clients (we just won our fifth national tech PR award in February) and interviewing new potential employees to handle the workload, so it’s been hard to post daily on TheLiberalOC. And to quote Matt Cunningham, “blogging doesn’t pay the bills.” In this case, he’s right.
This is my first comment on OrangeJuice in five years. I trust the current management won’t rewrite whole sentences of any comment like the previous administration did on comments and then attribute them to me.
“Suborn” is a very legal term. I don’t think that nameless is a lawyer, though, but I don’t actually know who he is.
I’ve rewritten some comments by Fiala (who I haven’t seen around anywhere for a while; hope he’s OK) as need be, and rarely bleeped or deleted words on other occasions where I thought that the situation merited it. When I do so, I offer to let the commenter ask me to delete it instead. At least one took me up on it once, which was fine. Vern tends to just delete wholesale or leave up.
How we as a society fund a robust media is a serious and significant issue. So is how we try to assure an informed citizenry; so is what we do in a nation of greater income disparity than we’d seen in almost a century, making what is easily affordable for some unimaginable for others. I’m not arguing that there are easy answers for the Register; I’m mostly predicting that what they’re doing isn’t going to work. A less draconian paywell, by contrast, might have — or might still.
Thanks for checking in!
The guy that doesn’t have time to follow blogs. Posts for “the first time in five years” a mere eight hours (overnight mind you) later.
Stevie Wonder can see the truth in that one.
I don’t think that he does “follow” us. I sent him a courtesy e-mail when I published this piece, given that I was discussing his recent column.
Greg, I wanted to ask Mr Dan C whether he knows that there is a strong suspicion that the “blogging doesn’t pay the bills” character is compensated by the corporate powers to operate his blog. As it seems that Dan C is as sensitive as his blog partner, Prevatt, may be you could send him another courtesy mail.
Is your comment “I presume that there are statistics out there that show what percentage of Santa Ana residents read English” a joke? If it is not, GSR will have another reason to torment you, and rightly so.
Ricardo,
Gormless said of Santanans that “If you can’t read English you won’t buy a paper in English.” I doubt that, even if this is true, that’s the reason that the Register could not sell papers there — and I further doubt that it’s true. But I would see no problem at all with there being a study done on adult English literacy in Santa Ana; it would be helpful information to know, for example, in discussing the provision of social services in the city. Why would we be better off not knowing what the demand would be for non-English-language communications?
1) I don’t understand the Gormless thing, please enlighten us.
2) I can’t believe I am actually writing this. but I am on sort of a “house arrest this weekend” Sorry if I get out of control. MLB TV, Archive.org only gets me so far…….BUT, Here goes:
3) Greg said: “Gormless said of Santanans that “If you can’t read English you won’t buy a paper in English.” I doubt that” REALLY?
You think that people that don’t read, speak or understand English (by my definition: bi-literate)purchase newspapers in English…..especially the OC Register? I’ll take your comment as a knee jerk reaction.
4) GD goes on: “But I would see no problem at all with there being a study done on adult English literacy in Santa Ana; it would be helpful information to know” I agree. interested parties (with financial interests)like FREEDOM COMMUNICATIONS should do this kind of research. It can easily be purchased from the SAUSD who has tremendous financial problems. It can also be done by surveys. But, a better LONG TERM solution would be: LEARN ENGLISH. Failure to assimilate will eventually destroy society as we know it. read/research follow the theory that David Cameron, former PM of Great Britain delivered on the problems associated with non-assimilation.
Sometimes I feel like we are throwing good money after bad in our attempt to help this social class.
Making the Orange County Register available to people who don’t speak English is like having a blind guy as a ping pong partner (FUCK anybody whose rebuttal includes a YOUTUBE video of a blind Indonesian kid with a paddle).
1) It’s a nickname.
2) ?? !!
3) You were generalizing inappropriately about Santa Anans’ ability to read English.
4) Many people (especially those who come her older) have problems learning English. Nevertheless, they and their progeny (who almost inevitably do learn English) have been a great boon to our nation.
5) OK, I believe that you feel that.
In the words of Pat Brown:
“I ain’t gonna win this argument” .
I have been working on websites that have had paywalls, freemium models, and have been straight up free.
My biggest issue is that the OC Register has this paywall but you can be damn sure they will still subject us to online ads as well as the junk they stuff in the paper itself.
If I am going to pay for something I don’t want the site double dipping my subscription dollars and forcing me to look at crappy ads.
Well, this has been a fun read! Since you mentioned me (twice) I feel obliged to chime in, again, on this subject. Yes, I subscribe to the Register in print (7 days a week) and online. I’ve been a subscriber in print for 3 decades. I also subscribe to the LA Times ( which includes the Daily Pilot) and the Wall Street Journal (print and online). That probably puts me just south of a grand a year for those news sources. Since I do try to stay abreast of what’s going on around us I think it’s a good investment. If I was forced to drop one it would be the Times, which has become less relevant and less valuable to me, and I’d have to read the Pilot online. The Wall Street Journal is, by far, the best news source I read daily (except Sunday, although I do have some carry-over articles laying around on that day, too).
The Register has excellent county coverage and it’s getting better as they’ve staffed-up over the past year or so. More and better reporters, more in-depth articles, great high school sports coverage… and on and on. It’s worth the money to me.
However, the paywall has created a problem for me with my blog. Frequently I would link to a Register article so my readers could get more information than I had the time or inclination to provide. Now I no longer do that because it just creates confusion when the reader can’t reach the article because they don’t subscribe. So, I just quote the articles liberally (a painful word for me to even write!) and they lose potential long-term readers.
We can talk about a “free press”, but that kind of information has never been “free”. The freedom to present diverse views is there, but somebody has to pay the bills. All you guys here at the OJ and at the Liberal OC and other blogs – Pedroza’s, for example – attempt to cover expenses with your ads. I do understand the economics of it, although I don’t participate. I hope Aaron Kushner has actually figured this out, but my instinct tells me he has not, and that his grand experiment will fail, and fail badly, when the numbers finally are tallied. I don’t usually want to be wrong, but I really want to be wrong about this.
Today, if you find a copy of the Register and are provoked to respond to an article in it, you cannot post online unless you are (1) a subscriber and (2) are on Facebook. If you write a “real” letter to the editor, you won’t be able to read it unless you subscribe. These changes have dramatically negatively impacted the public discussion of important issues.
There are many frustrating elements involved in how this “news” transition is happening. Revered names like Newsweek (now defunct) and Time (on the brink) have discovered that folks don’t want two-week old news – not when they can get it RIGHT NOW from many sources. Somebody has to figure out how to make the online model work – the Journal may have figured it out. Otherwise, the populace is going to be left with only us bloggers for the news – a tragedy almost beyond comprehension.
Good perspective. I hadn’t actually intended to smoke you out (I just knew of your position, given that you had presented it) and I hope that you didn’t begrudge offering it. There’s a definite trade-off present between the press’s ability to sustain its business model and the collective good of our having a well-informed public. I don’t have the answers. I just think that, given the draconian nature of the Register’s paywall — and the fact that they rejected alternative models that would make it easier for them to retain their historically central role in writing about Orange County — it’s a story well worth covering. I also think that they’re making a mistake in, at a minimum, the scope and intensity of their approach.
I don’t think that I’ve come out against any sort of pay requirement generally for some features, though. For example, I think that their editorials are obviously extremely precious and should be hidden behind the equivalent of a 20-foot wall, to keep rabble like me (and most of the rest of OC) away!
Their editorials should be written in invisible ink. The kind that, when you were a kid, you needed to squeeze a lemon on to read. And then the lemons should be way up high, and costly.
The last time I tried to smoke somebody out around here, he said:
“I don’t have a card, is that OK?”
The Register dropped from #6030 in Alexa’s global rankings to #6078.
We’re at #747,141. I think that that’s down a little, but it may not have included Miss Info’s blockbuster post.
the del taco by my office usually has several copies of the register next to the soda machine. i can usually grab a number nine (del beef burrito, taco, fries, medium drink all for $5.49) and enjoy the register for free..
MORE UNFAIR ADVANTAGES FOR THE PRIVILEGED CLASS!!!
greg,
you passed the bar, you practice law in orange county,,,listen to the siren call of the privileged class…there is still hope for you to turn you life around, represent corporate clients, drive an inefficient fuel guzzling escalade, live in a gated community in a house with a carbon spewing home entertainment system requiring enough energy to light a small african village. send your kids to elitist private schools in the hills of newport coast, have the wife lunch at the neiman marcus tea room (a regular patron of which is ms kobe bryant)..all this can be yours,,,just ask yourself “what do you want from life/”
“What Do You Want From Life?” The TUBES’ BEST SONG! Even better than “White Punks on Dope!”
“…and a baby’s arm holding an apple!”
sometime in 1973, 1974 the tubes did a show at cal state fullerton. one of the best concerts ever in orange county. you would be amazed if you knew who produced that show
and??? You’re gonna tell us?
Sigh — yet another album that I have to transfer from vinyl. I was going to say that their best song was “Wall Street Shuffle,” but that’s 10cc. I mix those bands up; I think that they should have merged. Wouldn’t matter; trying to play them to any of my daughters would lead them to run screaming from the room in terror, because it is old but it hasn’t been resurrected on Glee.
What was that song about materialism that your daughter Jasmine sang with me at Occupy Irvine? Tell her this is an early version of the same song. Except she’ll probably figure that out herself.
WPOD a classic.
Although if you can find it, watching Vince Welnick take is own life with a sharpened Samurai Sword in front of his friends and family (and I think a band mate or two) is pretty compelling.
Talk about mental illness and depression and he didn’t need an “illegal gun” bought on the internet to do it.
I’ll Talk To You Later………
The song was “Price Tag.” Similar theme, but nowhere near as sardonic.
[Thinks.]
Ahhhhhh … ok. Tell me where I sign up.
Wait — I can still wear my Jesus sandals, right?
can’t
sworn to secrecy over sgt pepperoni pizza back in the day
Ed Royce and the Tubes, eh? Was the caged POW with the chainsaw on stage Ed’s idea? Now it all comes out…
i think the formal name was royce/lewis productions
The OCReg paywall is different: you cannot get around it in any known way. The LATimes and NYTimes paywall are quite porous – just clear your cache and cookies and boom, you are back in for your free 5 or 10 articles. The Reg, no way. NO articles appear to be viewable unless you log in with a paid account. The conservative voice of Orange County News has been silenced, and this could be why the left is happy.
Wait, are you calling the Lib OC the “left?”
The left is me and Diamond, and we’re not particularly happy.
I think that Duane and GSR — at least the old GSR — would dispute that last bit. I consider myself “near left” — beyond liberal but not to the point of abandoning the Dems. (Of course, I also believe that such a position also entitles me to call myself a “moderate” on a reasonable political spectrum.)
I’m happy to see their editorial page locked up; not happy to see the news pages locked up as well. But the editorial page is the best hostage for them to hold if they want money from willie’s friends and the Winships’ neighbors.
Uh, I just paid $198.45 for 14 months of Register, 7 days a week. Where do you get $365?
($7 x 52) +1 if you subscribe by the week.
I’d feel bad about not putting in the annual subscription rate, but I looked around their site and they do not seem to advertise it!
$365 isn’t a lot for me to spend for a whole year of something I’d enjoy. The last few major news events that have happened (Ebert death, Connecticut shootings come to mind) first heard through Twitter or Facebook. Then there’s thousands of sources of news to choose from after that moment. I just don’t see the value of regional newspapers. I have always ranked them as one of the lowest forms of sources for news. (Read through the comments on most of the stories, you can’t take half of those people seriously.) Then to have them try to charge money for something that I already thought of as someone else’s leftover meal. It will never happen. I’m in my mid 30s. I don’t see how anyone under the age of 55 would take a site OCRegister seriously enough to fork over 1/2 their meager pittance from Uncle Sam.
Pardon my smugness earlier… Sunday, April 14th, the Register system gave me the finger! It allowed me to access some articles, but blocked me from others – like Mike Reicher’s piece on the Mesa Water District! And, of course, nobody is home at The Register on Sunday! Grrr! They better figure this stuff out pretty darn soon or they’re going to lose even more subscribers.
Closing the door, this time, on my personal Paywall fiasco. It took three telephone calls, speaking with 5 different people at 3 different venues, to get my account reinstated. Nobody will fess-up to what happened, but something at the Register’s end went kaput sometime Sunday. So, now I’m a relatively happy camper again – except I don’t link to Register articles for my readers any longer – why bother? Unless they pay the freight they can’t see them… Grrrrr…
More than anything, I am wondering how this move is going to effect their advertisers. Who wants to advertise to something that is not read? The comment sections were dying with the switch to FB and they are truly dead now. Unfortunately for the Register, I’ve hijacked a family members paper subscription and log in that way, so no money for them. There really isn’t anything to stop someone from doing that, particularly if they have an “old school” relative that likes the paper but doesn’t use a computer for news.