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Topic: Miscellaneous items
Date/Time: 2/12/2009 12:47:07 PM
Title: Charlie Rose panel discusses the future of papers
Posted By: Jim Romenesko
 
ROBERT THOMSON: I don’t think we jumped off the edge. This is a roundtable.

(LAUGHTER)

ROBERT THOMSON: To be honest, last week, bad week. This week, up on
budget. So it’s very fluky. Very, very difficult to read the advertising
market.

Mort is right. What you’re seeing was a decline last year, which we
all hoped in the autumn would end this year. There is still a decline.
But there are still opportunities out there for people who are constantly
reviewing their strategy. Because one of the problems we have is that
people are debating micro payments theories from a decade ago.


CHARLIE ROSE: Explain micro payments. Even though Walt started to
talk about it.

ROBERT THOMSON: Well, essentially, it can work several ways. One, we
can have your details -- we can have your credit card and we can charge you
monthly for a subscription. Or I think the idea that Walter is expounding
is....

CHARLIE ROSE: And Michael Kinsley in today’s “New York Times.”

ROBERT THOMSON: Doesn’t agree. It is that for an article, an article
that you’re interested in or a collection of articles that you’d open your
e-person and pay.

Now, there is absolutely no doubt that it’s getting much easier to
charge people in that manner, and there’s absolutely no doubt that people
are much more comfortable paying that way. Whether they will pay for a
content that is now free is the question.

CHARLIE ROSE: OK. Did you guys consider for a moment moving off the
model that you had...

(LAUGHTER)

ROBERT THOMSON: Well, more than for a moment, but...

(LAUGHTER)

ROBERT THOMSON: But we looked at it from every angle. Because people
in the digital world actually are some of the most conservative,
curmudgeonly types now, because they’re still having these digital debates
from a decade ago.

People in the digital world were encouraging us to do so, because
advertising was going to grow exponentially. Regardless of how much
inventory, how many stores were created on the web. That’s just -- and we
could see then that that wasn’t going to happen.

And so, we liked the subscriber model, and now we love the subscriber
model, but...

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah. And it’s a wave of the future, so to speak?

ROBERT THOMSON: But one of the -- Google -- I mean, the harsh way of
just defining it, Google devalues everything it touches. Google is great
for Google, but it’s terrible for content providers, because it divides
that content quantitatively rather than qualitatively. And if you are
going to get people to pay for content, you have to encourage them to make
qualitative decisions about that content.

CHARLIE ROSE: And Google doesn’t do that.

ROBERT THOMSON: Google doesn’t do that.

CHARLIE ROSE: Walter, do you agree with that? Google?

WALTER ISAACSON: I agree. And also, what Google does is it allows
ads to be spread all over the Web. You can go to Google ad servers and put
ads on any site there is. So you have a huge inventory of advertising
sites, I mean places where people can place ads, and the declining amount
of ad dollars. Which is why I think the basis premise I’m trying to push
is that relying only on advertising dollars is, as Henry Luce once said,
economically self-defeating, and it actually destroys your bond with the
reader, because you’re chasing the advertiser and not trying to do what Mr.
Thomson just said, which is distinguish yourself for your reader.

MORT ZUCKERMAN: Well, not on the Web perhaps, but I have to say, you
have to distinguish yourself for the reader in terms of the print product.
At least that’s still is a part of it. And bear in mind, a lot of the
stuff that you read on the Web comes directly from the print product, and
that’s where most of the best stuff on the Web comes from. And so that is
still...

(CROSSTALK)

MORT ZUCKERMAN: I’m sorry?

WALTER ISAACSON: At least people should pay for it if they’re going
to point to it or aggregate it or use it in their blogs or whatever. /CONTINUED

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