You can’t sell news to people who won’t borrow Dickens is one of the most disturbing posts I’ve read in a while, one that I can’t quite believe is true but suspect that it may be.
Author Seamus McCauley writes about the implications of what we want vs. what’s good for us, the choices we make and the implications of that for newspapers as they move online. His argument (greatly simplified; you need to read the whole post):
…experimenters offered the subjects a snack: fruit or chocolate. Seven out of ten subjects asked for chocolate. But when the experimenters offered other subjects a different choice, the answer was different too: ‘I’ll bring you a snack next week. What would you like then, fruit or chocolate?’ Three-quarters of subjects chose fruit.” Other tests have shown that people choosing what to do now will tend to opt for gratification, but choosing what to do later will make a more considered choice.
~ snip ~
Apply for a moment this understanding of decision-making to newspapers and we arrive at a not-very-comforting conclusion. A newspaper is a package of information, the celebrity gossip and TV listings bundled in with the op-ed and the current affairs. Choose the bundle of news in a newspaper and you satisfy both parts of your decision-making brain. The dopamine system gets the immediate gratification of reading about the fabricated erotic misadventures of some soap actress or the Spurs result; the cognitive system gets the glow of knowing there’s real, hard, investigative news in there somewhere too….
~ snip ~
Online, news consumption is all about immediate gratification: you choose the story you want to read now every single time. (Unless you’re using del.icio.us or Instapaper: perhaps there lies the salvation of hard journalism.) Which perhaps takes us to the conclusion that not only is hard news outside the bundle hard to monetise, but that it’s unlikely to be read either….
There’s enough in there that rings true. When I shoulder-surf newspaper readers on the bus, they are more often than not immersed in the entertainment or sports pages. (Other, that is, than the very occasional, usually older, rider who’s carrying a broadsheet and reading either business or politics.)
At the same time, I’m not one of those who gets instant gratification from celebrity “news” coverage. I can’t escape knowing the latest about Britney, but I get my kicks from the real news. What I’m not sure of is how small of a minority that puts me in.
If Seamus’s conclusions are right, the future of newspapers is going to depend to a large degree to finding ways to maintain some aspects of the bundle and on those who make the financial decisions throwing their support behind the serious journalism effort in the face of most-emailed and best-read articles that are firing all those dopamine systems.
It also may mean that newspapers will wind up ceding the celebrity gossip, sports and other instant gratification beats and settling for smaller audiences and lesser income.
Tags: business, journalism, newspapers
