Hi Abhinandan,
Long time subscriber and well-wisher of Newslaundry here. Listening to Hafta is a part of my weekly routine and unlike some of your other listeners, I’m happier the longer the episode is 🙂
I have often heard you talk about the demerits of the ad-funded media model and how it’s eventual demise is inevitable. Speaking as a lay person (and not a media professional or business owner), I have to say I am not fully convinced. In my email below I will attempt to lay out what I see as the flaws / provisos in your argument. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in your mission; it just means it isn’t the only way to operate, it isn’t necessarily free from flaws, and perhaps most importantly, may not be economically viable in some contexts.
Let’s look at one of your primary arguments – the fact that an ad-funded model is beholden to advertisers and will bend it’s coverage to suit the interests of advertisers. While this is true in general, one could argue that if you have a very broad base of advertisers, you’re not going be ultra-sensitive to the needs of any individual one. So an NYT can aggressively pursue stories on Boeing and it’s safety practices despite the fact that Boeing advertises on NYT knowing that they can afford to lose Boeing as a customer because they’ve got a ton of others. It doesn’t free the model from potential bias, but it certainly helps. I think the more relevant issue in terms of funding here is the ownership. Regardless of the extent of advertising one is dependent on, the bias of the media outfit will fundamentally be determined by the interests of it’s owners. So I would argue that business houses and politicians owning media houses is a bigger challenge than advertisers funding it. Even if you had a fully subscriber funded model, you will still have money spinning events like seminars where advertisers play a role so unless one has zero partnerships with any commercial entity one can’t really claim to be free of any outside influence whatsoever. Besides, being subscriber driven doesn’t free individuals working in the media organization from inherent bias (even if there isn’t any economic benefit attached). Newslaundry is viewed (legitimately, I think) as a left-leaning organization, whatever you may say about Newslaundry not having a position. That’s not a criticism (my views are also left of centre) but just a demonstration of the fact that the perception of bias (and actual bias) does not vanish when you stop taking advertiser money.
Your other argument about the behaviours being impacted by advertiser funding relates to the tendency to go in for clickbait journalism because that drives traffic. That might be true, but I would argue that a subscriber funded model also needs to drive engagement, and hence modifies its content to suit the demands of its audience. It’s not as if it is immune to the demands of the paying public. If Buzzfeed found that their readers didn’t click on listicles, they wouldn’t have listicles. So the advertiser isn’t driving the content. The website is doubling down on content that its people like, in an effort to draw in advertisers. In the same way, you at Newslaundry are also responding to reader taste by starting a “Daily Dose”. If you didn’t respond to what your readers / listeners want, you wouldn’t be able to sustain your business either. Whether a listicle is a public good is then a moral question but the driver of content is the consumer of it. If you were running the ToI and had to commission the Cauvery Chronicles, your first question would be whether your readership would be interested enough in it, rather than whether an advertiser doesn’t like public interest journalism of that nature.
Btw I have a huge problem with people asking you for news capsules (in brief, I think it’s just plain lazy and a borderline abdication of civic duty) but I’ll save that rant for another time.
My biggest concern with the subscriber funded model is it’s economic applicability to core news gathering organizations. What I mean by that is: if we believe the ad-funded model deserves to die then are we saying The Times of India, NDTV, CNN, whatever also need to be purely subscriber driven? If that is the case, with their current cost structure, if they retained their readership / viewership, what is the amount each reader would have to pay to access the same content? You know the economics of the business better than I do so help me with this—I pay $15 a month for my NYT subscription. If NYT stopped taking any ads, how much do you think I would have to pay just for them to break even? Ditto a copy of the Times of India? If the current breakeven cost model is funded to the tune of 15 per cent by subscription (I think that’s an over-estimate for ToI), then if they get rid of ads, the price of the paper needs to become 4.5x if you still want the same paper ( = the cost remains the same). That’s at the current subscriber base. How many people around you will pay 4.5x for the current quality of the newspaper. If they lose subscribers it becomes even more expensive for the remainer subscribers. Then the newspaper becomes a product for the super wealthy. Is that desirable? If we agree that we need newspapers and magazines and news channels that do actual day-to-day, mundane-to-strategic reportage (rather some niche reportage and some opinion-writing like websites tend to do), and hence there is a need to invest in a proper news gathering and analysis cost structure, then do the economics work? Is it enough to say people should pay for their news (they must!) when the payment looks like 10x of what it is today? How many in our society can stomach that cost? Is it desirable that they potentially can’t access the New York Times because we’ve not let advertisers subsidize our news gathering, with the result that the product has become too expensive for mass consumption? If we agree that we need proper newspapers and news channels, which come with the cost structures they do, then I don’t think the ad-free model is applicable to them. It’s certainly necessary for them to reduce dependence on ads—and hence people need to start paying more – but as a public good, for them to go ad free would be disastrous for society, which would be ironic given that the starting premise of your argument is that ads are destroying media, and hence society 🙂
To sum up, I think subscriber funded models are superior to ad-funded ones, but can’t (and shouldn’t?) be applied across the media landscape.
I’m sure I haven’t changed your mind, but if I have made you even question one of your assumptions then I’ll count it as a victory 🙂
Regards
Arijit Sarkar
