What’s Wrong with the News? The Best Stories Can’t Be Told

I came to a realization a few minutes ago. I pay for content on the web. I pay download music. If I want to watch a movie, I pay for that. I was one of the few people who paid, for a while, to join some sort of premium access to last.fm. I subscribe to Consumer Reports and, as part of my home delivery, the Wall Street Journal online. I pay for plenty of content online. Yet, I won’t pay for regular ole news (except for WSJ). You know why? Because it can be told to me pretty darn easily.

The reality we as Americans have never paid for news. It may seem as though we have. In reality, we’ve been paying for the paper on which the news was printed and by which it was delivered to us. Think about it… News came out today of the pilot from the USS Alabama, Richard Phillips, being rescued from hostages. Once you’ve heard that three pirates were killed, one was arrested and the pilot is safe, what else do you need to know? Nothing – with the exception of a small few of us. Your friend who happened to catch the news elsewhere can give you those details. The same can’t be said for music.

Can you imagine someone telling you how the latest Coldplay song sounds? “Well, this guy is singing in a pseudo-melodic tenor over a repetitive bed while a mild drum plays in the background. The song goes for 3 minutes and 23 seconds.” I don’t do Coldplay justice – nor would the average person. A similarly poor telling of a movie would occur. We have to pay to get the full impact of that content.

What makes news valuable is its perspective. Fox News does so well because its stories are so obviously unfair and unbalanced. In this age where all news content is expected to be free, the winner of the news wars will be those who identify their voice and allow each story to be told in that voice – in a way that makes it more and more challenging to repeat the story without losing some meaning. If news sites want people to pay for content, they’re going to have to become more like the music and movie business. Make the stories an experience that cannot be easily retold and people will pay. It’s what National Public Radio (NPR) and it’s huge part of what makes people so willing to contribute to their local public radio station. The vast new media resources available make such stories more feasible than ever. Now it’s time for old media world to start doing some out-of-the-box new media thinking. If they don’t, it will certainly be easy to tell their story “They died off like the dinosaurs they were.”