The 99-Cent iPhone App That Kills Print Journalism
I can actually gauge the precise moment when I knew it was all over for print journalism, when all the speculation and escalating dread crystallized into an inescapable, wrenching reality.
It was May 20 at 8:07 p.m., when I downloaded an App for my iPhone that carried the ironic handle of News Fuse USA. Like a stick of dynamite, it exploded in my face, any speck of subtlety blown to the proverbial smithereens.
For a one-time payment of 99 cents -- 99 cents! -- News Fuse supplied me with content from 27 (as in Two-Seven) separate news outlets, to wit: the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, ABC News, CBS News, BBC America, Yahoo!, the Associated Press, Fox News Channel, NPR, Time, Newsweek, ESPN, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Times, the New York Post, the L.A. Daily News, the Washington Times, Business Week and the Huffington Post.
(All right, so in a few cases I stretched the term "news outlet," but you catch my drift.)
Mind you, this wondrous little application delivers the individual content of each news site in a brilliantly streamlined, slick package without littering icons all over your screen. The sources appear en masse or disappear with a single touch. Every one of the newsers features comprehensive, up-to-the-minute content, laid out simply and attractively.
It takes roughly five seconds for each of the 27 to refresh, update and appear on your screen, depending of course on the strength of your connection. But no matter how weak your wireless, it's infinitely faster than is required for any of the print publications to set type, print, bind, load the delivery truck and plop on your doorstep.
Arguably, it's hours shorter. And of course, the printed stuff is already ancient history/obsolete by the time it reaches your bleary eyes first thing in the AM. Duh.
Were you to purchase a subscription to each of these news sources one at a time -- either via print, cable or satellite -- the price tag would come out to something around, oh, $150.00 a month or so. On this little slice of news junkie heaven, it's all completely instant and up to date at the twitch of a digit. And again, you get it all for a one-time charge of 99 cents. Ninety-Nine Cents!!!!!!!
Once!!!!!!!
Lest anyone care to point out that by downloading and using News Fuse I am actively contributing to my own print demise, touche'. You are entirely correct. But then, I am doing the same by writing this blog post for TheWrap and not pitching it to a print op-ed page, which could take days or weeks of assessment before being rejected rather than the near-instantaneous acceptance and posting of the blogosphere.
The truth is that I continue to carry print subscriptions to the N.Y. Times, L.A.Times, Time and Newsweek and likely will continue to do so as long as they're available. But I have to admit my commitment to print is these days more a matter of duty and principle than enlightenment.
If I'm only staying attached to print out of guilt -- and I work in the industry, or at least did until parting company with the Hollywood Reporter a week ago -- it has to say something. But what?
Here is what I think it fairly screams: The pined-for print rebound that journalistic professionals and purists continue to screech about ain't going to be coming around the bend anytime soon. Not in this economy. Not with the cost of paper and distribution. Not when everyone is increasingly accustomed to free information the same way Young America sees free music not as a systemic flaw but a birthright. Not when you can get whatever you want, whenever you want, for 99 cents.
Would I pay 20 bucks a month for News Fuse? Maybe. Would anybody else? I doubt it. We are, after all, now living in the simultaneously having-and-eating our cake world of entitlement where we expect everything to happen instantly, flawlessly and without cost – the Magic Media! But logic naturally tells us there will invariably be a pauper to pay.
At some point, perhaps soon, the news fuse will burn out, since it’s difficult to imagine journalists producing real content in a world devoid of real-world wages. They’ll be forced to move on to a profession that’s compatively stable, like e-book formatting.
In the meantime, I’m working overtime to acclimate to a news venue that’s visually 1/20th the scale of that supplied by my beloved dead trees. Progress is a bitch on the eyes. But the price certainly is right.
For now, anyway.
Comments
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Mimi Says
Thanks for the heads-up.free games
Orenthal Says
Free OJ! The Juice was framed.
Tony C. Says
Very true Ray, as more and more people get Twitter-pated and sign on to RSS feeds, the daily paper grind will grow increasingly irrelevant. Case in point: Yesterday's near-instantaneous flash of news about the death of Michael Jackson. The only reason to pick up a newspaper is to find out the juicy details and get some analysis. Otherwise, 24-hour cable TV news and the blogosphere have the lion's share of the eyeballs and readers.
Good luck with your future endeavors.
-Tony
Patrick Thornton Says
@Ray,
I don't want to piss on your parade here (as I'm glad you discovered the power of RSS), but you could have just used the mobile version of Google Reader for free and manually added hundreds of even thousands of your favorite news sites to it.
Plus, Google Reader on your iPhone (free) syncs with Google Reader in your Web browser (free).
So, really you paid 99 cents! for an inferior version of something you could have gotten for free.
In fact, I've argued that all journalists should be using RSS as a reporting tool: http://beatblogging.org/2009/02/17/screencast-how-to-use-rss-and-google-...
~Pat
www.patthorntonfiles.com
tyler Hurst Says
Wow, you discovered RSS? Welcome to the world the rest of us have known for years.
Now, what happens when newspapers stop supplying their stories for free? RSS is a great tech, but someone has to write the content. No money means no writers.
Ray Says
One must ask, why is this any more legal that me buying (say) the latest stephen king books, putting it on the web and streaming it to whomever buys my 99 cent ask.
Were that legal, Mr. King likely wouldn't keep writing books.
And those information sources you crave won't be able to afford to report and write, as well as print copies.
Media organizations need to fight for copyrights, or we will all lose.
Jeff in San Antonio Says
The news agencies would LOVE to have 300 million people pay 99 cents to use this service. Then, once everyone becomes dependent on News Fuse for its new ... guess what? You WILL be paying $20 a month for it -- or whatever they wish to charge. Get people hooked on it, then inflate the price. And people will have to pay it -- because by that time: 1) newspapers will be obsolete; 2) the newspaper industry will still have to pay its staff; and 3) some competition will have emerged, and made deals with the media outlets to deliver the goods to your iPhone as well.
And I keep telling people -- if you think newspapers are going away ... who is going to be writing the articles you are paying 99 cents a month for? Perez Hilton?
danbloom Says
Ray, i put your link on twitter at @polarcityman
this is a very good article and romenekso linked to it too
bravo
thing is Ray, you won't be reading the news on NEWS FUSE , you will be screening it....big diffference, if you catch my drift.....wonder if one day you can blog on this new kind of reading we will be doing called screening....it is both emotionally and intellecutally vastly diff from reading on paper and it does not bode well for humankind...we get dummer and dummer with only screening........goodbye mr paper, hello, end of world
\
sigh
google "danny bloom + reading + screening" to see more
danbloom Says
Ray
Danny from the old days now in Taiwan. Are you reading this note or screening it? The key word is screening. See my article here on why we need a new word for the kind of reading we do on a screen..... DANNY BLOOM
http://zippy1300.blogspot.com
omg Says
stick to covering Hollywood.
Bruce Wood Says
Interesting column. However, none of those media outlets inform me about what is happening in my home town. Our home town weekly keeps us informed about what's happening right where we live.
Buried in the city's recent resident satisfaction survey you'll find that over 60% of the residents name that weekly as their number one source for local news. Three times those that name the out of town daily and the internet sites don't even come close.
Newspapers that provide unique, relevant content that can't be found anywhere else will thrive and those that do not, will not.
Lauren Says
"If I'm only staying attached to print out of guilt -- and I work in the industry, or at least did until parting company with the Hollywood Reporter a week ago -- it has to say something. But what?"
All it says is that the only people who will retain loyalty to outdated mediums do so out of misguided nostalgia. It'll pass.
Michelle Belaskie Says
Good to see that someone scooped up your talents, Ray.
Glad to see you on the Web.
Great column, as usual.
http://michebel.blogspot.com
--Miche
Hugo Says
"The man who discovered the RSS after 10 years" is more impressive than his own article...
Hugo Says
"The man who discovered the RSS after 10 years" is more impressive than his own article...
RickWaghorn Says
So if that bangs a final nail in the coffin of the newspaper, what does it say about the future of the browser...?
http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=250
All the best, etc
Rick
Tim Holmes Says
You mean to say that you can get news NOT in a newspaper? Why did no one tell me this before!!!
Brian Bilbrey Says
There, and I thought that pauper != piper was merely a witty malapropism, on purpose of course. You're welcome to agree with the assessment. Interesting times, indeed.
Ray Richmond Says
Guy:
You're correct about "pauper"/"piper," of course. Perhaps I was merely thinking about the piper's recent bankruptcy filing. Good catch. My bad.
Jon Says
Most of the RSS feeds used in these type of products are offered for individual and non-commercial use. It won't take long before the content owners clamp down on these applications.
Matt Says
Sorry — this doesn't really kill anything. It's a chromeless web browser with a bunch of news mobile sites as bookmarks. They didn't do anything revolutionary here. It may clean up your homescreen, but it doesn't do anything that a bunch of web clips couldn't do. That way, you could actually customize which outlets you want to read.
Plus, if any of these sites wanted to, they could simply block access from this application. Not that they would, but if, say, USAToday wanted people to use their actual native app — something thats far more "revolutionary" than this 99-cent full screen browser — then they could. The actual content of the mobile sites hasn't been repackaged or repurposed in any meaningful way that actually makes something new. And if any of these papers were to fold (which is likelier than I would like), then you've got a useless bookmark to an empty page.
Sorry to burst the bubble. But thanks for the heads-up on the app! It's useful for what it is. Mobile Safari adds puts too much visual noise with their tool bars and menu bars, so it's definitely useful for that. But don't expect this thing to take out any journalist's paychecks anytime soon.
Guy Lucas Says
You pay the piper, not the pauper, as much as a pauper might need it.
Ester Says
Such A deal! 99 cents!!
We love THE WRAPS instantaneous ability to publish blogs from awesome contributors like yourself. Keep em coming Ray!
smooches,
Ester
Views From A Broad
http://estergoldberg.com
kathy Says
thanks for the heads-up....
John O. McCoy Says
Well, Gutenberg is being transformed into electronics. Moveable, metal typesetting finally began a final disappearance with Pagemaker, and Adobe finished the job along with four color strippers (they laboriously stripped up overlapping negatives to create full color printing). The things that have been replaced would be prohibitively expensive. The old techniques are still in use if certain effects are needed, though that is coming to an end. I was a published and adopted each of these electronic innovations because they saved a lot of money, time, and irritation.
I love to sit with a book, but with paperback novels starting to cost about $15, I find myself becoming ready to read from an electronic screen. Kindle is a good start and Apple may be about to upstage it with something that will hurry the demise of printed books. In fact, I and many others, are reading books on the iPhone. Scrolls are gone with the middle ages, much printed material will be gone with the age of inexpensive, fast computers/screens; and perhaps better schools that turn out people who can read.
Writers will have to make up with volume the loss of 10%'s on books that few can afford to buy. If You Tube and/or iTunes start publishing, more and more writers will be published, and we will begin to see photography, movies, electronic illustration, music, narration, 3-D, huge in home screens with projectors, etc. replacing books, more and more. We live in interesting times.
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