Why should news be FREE when it has such value?
When you go and get your morning coffee do you sometimes change things up… go for a shot of caramel or try a plant based milk in a bid to “be healthier”?
Perhaps you’re the Wednesday workplace coffee run employee with a list of orders containing more coffee variety than there is in that box of Roses chocolates your netball club gave you for keeping score each week? Everyone seems to want something a little bit different, something special just to their taste.
But no matter how inconsistent your or the workplace coffee order is, there is one thing for certain…. You pay for that coffee.
In my 35 years as a journalist and having been in the thick of big newsrooms during the transition to online news and the challenges of social media sharing, I have seen the cries of “news should be free” and outward anger for having to subscribe to newspapers to read articles.
It is not the case with Newsport, and never has been. You are served four articles a day, put up on our website and archived for you to access more than a decade of local news.
We’ve even made it easy for you with a free app so you can access the news, for free, at the touch of a button. Our email alerts go out daily and in the past two years we’ve put a fortnightly free hard copy print edition on the streets as a keepsake that celebrates our community.
As a journalist who has always invested pride and passion for the communities I work in, and an editor who has revived newspapers in troubled communities including Alice Springs, I know that while Newsport’s offerings are free, they have incredible value to this community.
More generally, though, people who demand free news bug me no end. It seems perfectly fine to them for a journo to have to leave their home each day for 8 hours (most often more) where they may do anything from being on the scene of an emergency or sitting in a council meeting, covering a murder trial, getting abused or even assaulted, or capturing those proud sports and school moments people want to see in the press….. and then for them to not get paid for that.
If you know of a workplace that operates this way - the use of slave labour - please do let me know. It will make a hell of a story.
In large papers with lots of journos - although way fewer exist than compared with a decade ago - you might get some specialist journos covering particular rounds…. They always “flat white, one sugar” on the coffee run. Their expertise in that field of writing is crafted over years, they have knowledge and understanding of the topic that others do not and they cater for a particular type of reader.
In smaller newsrooms, the few writing staff will need to cover a bit of everything for everyone’s taste. They’re producing cappuccinos, short blacks, even dabbling in chai now and again because for whatever reason, someone likes it!
The comments also of “you just stole that from social media…. do your job” also grind my gears. Of course we pick up news tips and leads from social media.
It is not everyone’s go to, but it’s pretty standard practice for our smart phone armed society to post an event on socials before even stopping to offer assistance or ask what is going on. They’re not phoning a newsroom with the tip off. And there’s no shortage of readily offered, published, comments to work with.
As an investigative journalist deep diving into cold case crimes, social media is both an incredibly powerful tool to draw information and contacts from, and a nightmare to keep in check.
It is also a place where that “news should be free” chant rings loud, while those who chant it typically want to argue with the content produced by news journalists who are accountable to what we write as opposed to the “I’m entitled to my opinion” commentators.
It isn’t ideal that the first raising of a news story now often will come from social media, but it is the reality. And we can’t change people’s habits… although a social media ban for those Under 16s might swing things. Parents, are you prepared for the possibility of getting more than a “yup” text response from your teen when next you try to communicate with them?
All news shouldn’t be free, but it should be valued, especially when you are lucky enough when you get it for free.
If you don’t pay for your coffee, the barista won’t keep making it for nothing.
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Bryan Littlely is senior journalist with Newsport and an Investigative Journalist and freelance producer. His podcast project SLEEPERS, looking at South Australia’s cold case crimes including the 1966 abduction of the Beaumont Children, the Adelaide Oval abduction in 1973 and crimes of The Family across Adelaide is available, for FREE, where you get your podcasts.
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