Journalism, radio and stuff like that
Paul Carr of NSFWCorp on the problem with some paywalls:
Porous paywalls for journalism make as much sense as a coffee shop giving free lattes to anyone who comes in just twice a week but then charging fifty dollars a cup on the third visit. That’s a hell of a loyalty scheme, and a great way to encourage people to settle for just a couple of free cups of coffee rather than drinking more and having to pay.
Me on Techradar, writing about real world retailers’ troubles.
In recent months we’ve seen lots of big names go belly up, citing too-high rates, rents and parking charges, as well as Amazon’s tax avoidance and dodgy downloads. There’s no doubt that it’s tough out there, and of course every retail job loss is a tragedy for the people put out of work.
But it’d help if some businesses’ strategy for combating the internet threat wasn’t “deliver the most miserable shopping experience imaginable”.
Apple’s Phil Schiller slags off Samsung, so of course Apple is doomed. Me at Techradar:
You see exactly the same in music (“Our album’s going to be so much better than theirs“), and in boxing (“I am really good at punching people, and he isn’t”), and in supermarkets (“We’re cheaper than them, and our food isn’t made of horse!”).
Some parents let their kids use apps. Everybody panic! Me, at Techradar:
My daughter’s been using gadgets since she was two. Kids’ ebooks from the likes of Oliver Jeffers and Nosy Crow are wonderful things. We’re using apps such as Mathboard to help her learn arithmetic. We have dozens of great apps for kids that enable her to do arty, crafty things without getting paint, glue or glitter on the dogs. We use Google Image Search to find pictures of things she wants to know about. She records her own voiceovers for talking books.
It’s part of a wider mix that involves stacks of books, real-world arts and crafts, day trips to interesting places, nightly question and answer sessions and lots of conversations, and if from time to time she wants to watch Fairly Odd Parents on Netflix when I’m making the dinner then that’s fine by me.
John Scalzi on dodgy ebook business models:
This shit’s been around, my friends. It’s been around for decades, and writers groups and others who make it their business to warn aspiring authors about scams and pitfalls have been raising flags about it all that time. The idea that that because it’s now attached to electronic publishing, that somehow makes it different (and, more to the point, better) is highly specious, to say the least.
Sprinkling the Internet on a bad business model does not magically make it a good business model. It merely means that the people who are pursuing a bad business model are hoping you are credulous enough to believe that being electronic is space-age zoomy and awesome and there is no possible way this brilliant business plan could ever fail. Or even worse, that they believe that being electronic means all these things, which means they are credulous. Which is not a very good thing to have as the basis of one’s business model.
Scalzi’s post is relevant to most kinds of creative job, not just books. Creative industries are often seen as glamorous, and that glamour often blinds people to the reality of what’s happening when money’s being discussed. How many times have you heard musicians moan about their terrible record deals, the contracts that they signed not just willingly, but happily?
you can’t blame the publisher for then taking you for every single thing they can. Because, remember, that’s their job. They don’t even need to be evil to do it; they just have to be willing to take every advantage you let them have. That’s business. This is a business negotiation.
There’s been a big stramash about online publications asking journalists to work for free, and Paul Carr’s post is probably the only one you need to read on the topic:
Advertising-supported sites like the Atlantic are trapped in a nightmare of their own making: reliant on delivering millions of page views to shift huge amounts of ad inventory which at best barely covers the cost of production.
If you’re a writer considering working for free, please don’t do it:Â I absolutely understand the problem of getting a profile when you’re new to the industry, but if you’re contributing professional quality work to a commercial entity in the hope of getting paid work later you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
We’ve already seen this happen in photography. Check out the photo credits on big sites and more often than not they’re Creative Commons, not photo agencies. Individually, photographers offering Creative Commons images are trying to boost their profile so they can get paid work. Collectively, they’re getting rid of the paid work.
(Not all CC imagery is from photographers who want paid, of course, but that’s a whole other blog post).
The wider problem here is that of course, we readers don’t really want to pay for stuff. We’ve gone from a situation of scarcity, where the only way to get what you were interested in was to buy a print publication, to extreme abundance, where you have 7,000 publications all covering the same story about Apple – and all dependent on advertising, because if it’s on the internet it must be free. As a result, ad rates are microscopic and you get sites such as The Atlantic claiming that despite having 13 million readers, there isn’t enough money in the pot to pay for the content it publishes.
I think Thom Yorke hit on something in his recent Observer interview:
[Google et al] have made all content, including music and newspapers, worthless, in order to make their billions. And this is what we want?
There is no universe in which it’s possible to maintain a site like the Atlantic or Forbes or HuffPost or, increasingly, Slate or Salon without falling back on linkbait blogging and cheap or free syndication.
I don’t expect anybody to care about freelance writers, but if you’d like more choice than just MailOnline stamping on the human race forever and 27 funny pictures of cats then it might be a good idea to pay for the writing you value to ensure it sticks around. For me that’s the print mags and iPad editions and interesting new titles such as Tech. that I subscribe to; for you it might be Carr’s NSFW Corp, or Marco Arment’s The Magazine, or McSweeney’s.
And please, don’t work for free.
I wrote a wee piece in MacFormat about the scourge of videos shot in portrait mode, and Glen Mulcahy let me know about this superb public service announcement.
The answer, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is lots.
MWC 2013Â really reminded us of Girls Aloud, the pop phenomenon that’s reunited for one last tour: while the girls are officially equals, Cheryl Cole is a much bigger star than all the others combined.
MWC’s Cheryl was Samsung.
Samsung might not have turned up in a frighteningly tight corset and towering heels, but it managed to be part of the event while eclipsing it altogether…
I love my job.
I would say that 98 per cent of my time using the mobile web is spent swearing at websites, hurling expletives at interstitials, unleashing angry utterances at URL shorteners and firing f-bombs at Facebook.
The single most fundamental principle of the World Wide Web – the mechanism by which you click on something and something then appears – is being deliberately and widely broken.
I’m finishing off my last few commissions for 2012 – I thought I’d finished yesterday, but Freelance Santa dropped off some last-minute work, a present that’s very much appreciated – and I can honestly say this has been one of the weirdest years I’ve had, work-wise.
There’s a famously sarcastic curse: “may you live in interesting times”. It’s certainly been an interesting year for freelance tech writers. Some much-loved magazines have closed (thankfully the people on them have found other gigs), many new titles expect everybody to contribute their efforts for free, and online cesspools such as Mail Online have crashed the tech reporting party because Apple stories generate enormous amounts of traffic. And like every freelance with a website, I’ve been approached by 432,728 PR companies wanting to publish their editorial on this blog.
I really didn’t think I’d end 2012 still working as a freelance – the summer was particularly worrying – but I’m still hanging in there, doing a bit of copywriting, a bit of blogging, my weekly BBC Radio Scotland thing and lots of magazine and online work.
I’ve been writing for some interesting new launches – if you haven’t already checked it out, the iPad magazine Tech. weekly [iTunes link] is essentially The Week for technology, so you can read that and get hard information instead of spending loads of time wading through linkbait headlines, and Creative Bloq is a cool mix of design advice, inspiration and stuff to drool over – and while many great magazines have folded, old favourites such as .net, MacFormat and Official Windows Magazine continue to do really nice work both in print and in digital form.
Then there’s Techradar, whose mix of fast facts, expert analysis and taking the piss – guess who does a lot of that last one? – is doing astonishing numbers. I’ve never worked on a daily newspaper, but Techradar’s internet-speed deadlines give me the kind of adrenalin rush I imagine print hacks get from going to press.
I’ve been doing this since 1998, and one thing’s remained constant throughout: I know how lucky I am to be able to do what I do. Journalism, whether print, online or broadcast, is an exciting industry full of really cool, creative people, and it’s a joy to be part of it.
If I’ve worked for you or with you this year, or if you’ve enjoyed reading or listening to anything I’ve done, then thanks. You’re awesome.
Merry Christmas, everyone.