TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Peter Osnos’ Category

By Peter Osnos, Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation

One of the most persistent explanations for journalism’s present financial troubles is that consumers no longer have to pay for news.

The notion that everything these days is “free” on the Web is an article of faith—which happens to be wrong. Listening to a prominent newspaper editor make the “free” point the other day to a group of mostly nodding (and eminent) figures in the media world, I realized that a cri de coeur (an impassioned outcry of protest) is increasingly necessary. There is a great deal of money being generated by the transmission of news, but very little of it is going to the providers of that news, which is no longer tolerable. News is no more free these days than the “complementary” bag of pretzels you get on a plane, after you’ve paid for the ticket.

Newspapers a bargain compared to hundreds a month for tech

Consider that the consumers are paying for broadband, cell phone service, and satellites, plus the cost of the lap-tops, PDAs, televisions, and iPods. The monthly bill for all the delivery is easily a couple of hundred dollars. Mac laptops start at $1,099. Good Dell laptops start at $999. There are cheap cell phones but the kind that offer news and entertainment are still pricey as is the service that supports them. My household monthly tab for two cell phones (a Blackberry and an iPhone), a premium cable package, broadband, and two desktops computers, is about $675. Obviously, we use these devices for a great many things and, in today’s world, they are probably indispensable.

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By Peter Osnos, Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation

Moderator’s note: I’ve added the chart from Journalism.org, where you can go for a better look at it. - D.R.

In politics, “elitist” is now an epithet, surpassing even “liberal” as a description to be shunned. In the media, however, the “elitist” sector is doing better than most of the mass purveyors of news: the networks, news magazines, and the metropolitan newspapers that flourished so long as all things to all people.

Three leading elite publications come to mind, the Economist, the Financial Times, and the New Yorker. All of them are financially strong, albeit in the case of the Financial Times and New Yorker, after a period of losses. All of them have readers notable for their loyalty (and growing numbers) who are attractive to advertisers for their up-market demographics. And significantly, all of them provide journalism that is very good. Despite tony, Anglophilial reserve that can veer towards fustiness, they have avoided the image of being only for older readers. The New Yorker somehow managed to go from moribund to hip without losing its basic look or persona.

Three other publications serving the same English-language international audience also seem to be doing well, each serving a specific niche. Foreign Affairs, the bi-monthly published by the Council on Foreign Relations, has the highest circulation in its history. The New York Review of Books is choc-a-bloc with ads while newspaper-based book reviews are struggling, and Vanity Fair has held its own now for more than two decades courtesy of Tina Brown and Graydon Carter and offering a mix of first rate narrative writing and well, lesser stuff.

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By Peter Osnos, Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation

On March 24, George Soros delivered a finished manuscript by e-mail to PublicAffairs, his publisher, where I am founder and editor-at-large. Soros had concluded that the current turmoil is “the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.” He wanted his analysis, titled The New Paradigm for Financial Markets, available immediately.

Ten days later, on April 3, having been through the full range of publishing procedures-copy-editing, design, proofreading, and so on-the book was offered for sale, exclusively as an e-book. It was available through every major Web retailer, including Amazon’s Kindle, Sony’s Reader, booksense.com (which serves independent booksellers), and Overdrive (which supports hundreds of library systems). By its first evening, the book was #12 among Kindle’s “bestsellers.” The printed book (and a downloadable audio and large-print on-demand version) will be for sale on May 19, but based on pre-orders, it was #110 among Amazon’s overall listing.

In principle, and with certain technical limitations described below, the Soros book was now “published.” The distribution of books, like information and entertainment of all kinds, is being transformed. The impact will be profound, and unlike our counterparts in news, the effect can be all positive. Books have no advertising to lose and no subscribers to maintain. The biggest challenge to authors, publishers, and booksellers has been to make books available when, where, and how the consumer wants them. Technology, innovation, and eventually popular demand can now make the world of books significantly stronger than it has ever been.

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