George Nemeth · Marc Canter’s Strategy for the Plain Dealer

June 30th, 2009

From Marc’s Voice:

I noticed a conversation going on – in my Facebook feed about changing the copyright laws to permit newspapers to keep their content ‘exclusive’ for 24 hours. I’m amazed by the sheer audacity of that idea and it turned out that someone I was just introduced to – Connie Schultz – had come out in favor of this idea.

So since I’m moving to Cleveland and these are going to become my issues, I thought I’d weigh in on an alternative approach to helping out the Plain Dealer. After all it’s not the copyright laws that are broken, but the newspaper business model. In fact I could argue (and others have) that copyright is broken for a number of OTHER reasons, but I won’t go into that now.

What I do want to do is try and come up with some creative ways that the Plain Dealer can achieve profitability and sustainability in these crazy times. Followers of this blog may recall me doing this for MySpace and I’ve also pitched similar ideas to the NYTimes and the BBC.

So here goes…

Check it out. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

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2 Responses to “Marc Canter’s Strategy for the Plain Dealer”

  1. MIDWESTWIFE Says:
    June 30th, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    I don’t have a problem with copyright for newspapers that delays competitors (eg tv and radio) from using their work product for a few days. The Plain Dealer spends a few hundred or thousand man-hours on a story, and the local tv news puts it up the next day, so why buy the paper if you can see it for free on local tv. Ditto internet sites like Huffingtonpost that almost steal others work product in the 24 hour newscycle.

    The PD and many other newspapers have an unfortunate habit of running a story once, and then letting it drop if nobody notices. I don’t want their copyright protection be used to let a story die. (LA Times used to do amazing long term stories until a short=sighted investment banker bought them and gutted them.)

    Some of the internet stars (eg TalkingPointsMemo.com) have a business model that follows up on great local stories that died. An important source for TPM is frustrated local reporters whose stories didn’t click but who think there is more story or a broader story there. The politicization of the US Attorneys at the justice department was one such story. It wasn’t a big story in any one area (“Our local USAG was fired for no reason. This feels weird.”) but someone (TPM) put all the pieces together.

    I want to help local papers survive. but I would not support any change in copyright laws that would allow a local publisher who didn’t want to spend additional resources to follow up on a story to kill it because they have the copyright on the initial story but make the business decision not to follow up at the local level.

  2. Marc Canter Says:
    July 2nd, 2009 at 12:54 am

    Hey MIDWESTLIFE

    The point of my post was to make a few points which you have ignored.

    1. Business is business. The Tribune got taken down by an idiot who lost his shirt. He claimed he’d get the Tribune profitable and he never mentioned HOW.

    2. I tried to set forth in my strategy an approach which leveraged and built on the credibility and history of the Plain Dealer. By seeing itself as a brand more than just a newspaper – it might have a chance of surviving.

    3. But it won’t survive as “just” a newspaper. I hope you realize that and that I’m not saying anything new. So here’s teh question: “do you want the Plain Dealer to die or is it about saving newspapers?”

    4. Cause the former is a possibility while the later is a lost cause.

    5. Now maybe my strategy is the wrong strategy – but sitting around griping about the high costs of quality professional investigative journalism and yearning for the days of the 4th estate – I’m afraid to say – is a waste of time.

    IMHO