Distribute and Be Damned 65
to focus on paywalls: while that will definitely work for a number of organisations, however, it is highly unlikely to succeed for all. A number of
commentators such as Chritchlow and Dixon
93
have recently begun to
discuss how media “bundling” may offer a better way forward, a technique that has more recently been tried (with limited success for content
providers, it must be said) in the sphere of music via Spotify, Google
Play, and Amazon and Apple Music, but with greater apparent opportunities for video via Netflix, Apple, and Amazon Prime. Bundling is by no
means new to the digital era, and in many respects represents a simple
evolution of the services previously offered by technologies such as cable
and satellite subscriptions. Chritchlow even suggests that Google itself
could provide the framework for some kind of bundling in the form of a
Spotify for publishers.
Bundling may offer one route out for media companies to make
money from journalism, although for the best part of a decade various commentators have discussed whether journalism online can ever
be profitable and sustainable.
94
Jeff Jarvis has suggested that the future for journalism is to establish new relationships between writers and
readers, and that the business ecosystem of news production will indeed
use automation to make greater efficiencies, but that this needs to come
after a transformation of the ways in which journalists see themselves
as organisers, educators, and collaborators with their readers, as well
as revolutionising the format of copy using data, hyperlocalised stories,
and curating information online.
95
Jarvis offers some sensible observations about the need for journalism to change, but it still remains the
case that although the demise of news in the service of a public sphere
is prematurely announced, yet the consolidation of flows of capital and
finance into a digital duopoly has contributed to a severe weakening of
that public service in a way that William Henry Smith II could never
have envisaged.
Notes
1 Charles Wilson, First With the News: The History of W.H. Smith,
1792–1972, London: Jonathan Cape, 1985, p. 13.
2 Hannah Barker, Newspapers and English Society, 1695–1855, Abingdon:
Routledge, 1999, p. 21.
3 Lauren Wallace, “19th Century Print Visionaries”, Printweek, 3 April 2008,
p. 21.
4 Wilson, p. 18.
5 Craig Calhoun, The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and
Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2013; Simon Dawes, “Press Freedom, Privacy and the Public
Sphere”, Journalism Studies, 15.1(2014), pp. 17–32.
6 Jason Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
7 Graham Law, and Matthew Sterenberg, “Old v New Journalism and the
Public Sphere; or Habermas Encounters Dallas and Stead”, Interdisciplinary
to focus on paywalls: while that will definitely work for a number of organisations, however, it is highly unlikely to succeed for all. A number of
commentators such as Chritchlow and Dixon
93
have recently begun to
discuss how media “bundling” may offer a better way forward, a technique that has more recently been tried (with limited success for content
providers, it must be said) in the sphere of music via Spotify, Google
Play, and Amazon and Apple Music, but with greater apparent opportunities for video via Netflix, Apple, and Amazon Prime. Bundling is by no
means new to the digital era, and in many respects represents a simple
evolution of the services previously offered by technologies such as cable
and satellite subscriptions. Chritchlow even suggests that Google itself
could provide the framework for some kind of bundling in the form of a
Spotify for publishers.
Bundling may offer one route out for media companies to make
money from journalism, although for the best part of a decade various commentators have discussed whether journalism online can ever
be profitable and sustainable.
94
Jeff Jarvis has suggested that the future for journalism is to establish new relationships between writers and
readers, and that the business ecosystem of news production will indeed
use automation to make greater efficiencies, but that this needs to come
after a transformation of the ways in which journalists see themselves
as organisers, educators, and collaborators with their readers, as well
as revolutionising the format of copy using data, hyperlocalised stories,
and curating information online.
95
Jarvis offers some sensible observations about the need for journalism to change, but it still remains the
case that although the demise of news in the service of a public sphere
is prematurely announced, yet the consolidation of flows of capital and
finance into a digital duopoly has contributed to a severe weakening of
that public service in a way that William Henry Smith II could never
have envisaged.
Notes
1 Charles Wilson, First With the News: The History of W.H. Smith,
1792–1972, London: Jonathan Cape, 1985, p. 13.
2 Hannah Barker, Newspapers and English Society, 1695–1855, Abingdon:
Routledge, 1999, p. 21.
3 Lauren Wallace, “19th Century Print Visionaries”, Printweek, 3 April 2008,
p. 21.
4 Wilson, p. 18.
5 Craig Calhoun, The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere, and
Early Nineteenth-Century Social Movements, Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press, 2013; Simon Dawes, “Press Freedom, Privacy and the Public
Sphere”, Journalism Studies, 15.1(2014), pp. 17–32.
6 Jason Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
7 Graham Law, and Matthew Sterenberg, “Old v New Journalism and the
Public Sphere; or Habermas Encounters Dallas and Stead”, Interdisciplinary