Follow-Up: The Graduates Goes Quiet

In a popular earlier post, I ripped on The New York Times' The Graduates blog for eschewing a reality of graduating college: Finance and the rest of life's nitty-gritty. Since then, I've noticed that the popular new TimesSelect blog has gone quiet, just before graduation for many, but not all, of the blog's authors.

Has the plug been pulled on the blog? Or is this one more example of how out-of-touch the blog is with reality?

Or, put it this way: If "Eight College Seniors Face The Future," why did the future stop at the end of the semester?

The last post on The Graduates was on May 1, days before the first commencement exercises of many colleges. Since then, I'm sure many of the eight authors of the blog have graduated, moved home, or even possibly had to figure out for the first time how to sustain themselves on their own income. Surely, many of them have had to search for their first jobs.

Isn't this the moment of facing the future?

Now that The Graduates seems to have, well, graduated, there's nothing to show for all the worrying. I myself just graduated -- and I can say that the week after is probably the hardest week thus far of my life.

I'd also like to take a look at what The Graduates did and didn't accomplish. I originally received some backlash for having passed judgment after only one author had posted on The Graduates. But now that each author has posted a handful of times, I can say with certainty that most of my forecasted judgment was correct: The Graduates was a noble endeavor that fell flat, due to (mostly) irrelevant daydreaming and out-of-touch topic discussion.

Were there good posts? Sure -- I enjoyed the truth in Michael Erler's "No Jobs in Sight, but We're Busy Already," Tyler Graf's "Three Paths Toward the Future" and Anna Weggel's "Not Following the Money."

But there were low points too: Amber Wilson's shallow investigation into college senioritis in "Another Kind of Spring Fever: Senioritis" and Anna Weggel's obvious, nostalgic "What I'll Miss About College" (of course you'll miss these collegiate things - tell me what you won't miss! And how about what are you looking forward to?) come to mind.

It's not that these students can't write -- some of them can write very vividly (this is seen in the comments, too -- the first comment on every blog is usually, "beautifully written, (author)"). But as I recently heard in a trip below the Mason-Dixon, "you can't put lipstick on a pig." In this case, the writing is indeed beautiful, but too often the ideas are shallow, underdeveloped, or just plain irrelevant to "facing the future."

As I mentioned before, I don't know who is editing these posts, and this problem might have been out of the hands of the blog's student authors. But either way, The Graduates is haphazard and scattershot -- sure, like a college graduate's thought -- but in a way that shows little unity among the posts and even less original, or at least refreshing, thought.

Which is arguably why the blog wasn't that necessary in the first place -- it didn't offer anything deeper than what I can find on someone's MySpace page.

I read the Times to get a more comprehensive, developed take on a common story. In this case, all The Graduates did was contribute to the noise.

Plus, now we're left with the unfortunate task of wondering how these kids are "facing the future" and attacking the challenges they've claimed they are facing. It's like watching the first hour or two of the film Titanic: You see a beautiful movie about a love story between Jack and Rose, but have no idea that the real challenges are just beyond the iceberg. It's the final and fatal blow to the ill-fated blog: The reality that the blog ends before its subjects actually face the future.

Newspapers Undercut Their Own Profits, RIAA-Style

This morning, there's no one I disagree with more than David Lazarus. In a recent column for the San Francisco Chronicle, Lazarus states that newspapers are "giving away the store" and needs to "start charging for - or at the very least controlling - the use of our products online." He cites a growing fiscal discrepancy as the reason for such action, and indicates that the New York Times TimesSelect method isn't quite up to par.

David, the newspaper industry (and journalism as a whole) can not - and must not - become the RIAA.

If newspapers begin to charge for all of their news, the "common good" of news will be lost and will no longer function to serve the masses. That is the point of the news, isn't it?

But show me the money! you say. Alright - let's talk business.

In my very first journalism class, I was told that the price of a newspaper was so low because it functions as a relative value indicator - you have to pay for it, so it's got worth, but not much, because you're almost entitled to it (hip hip for common knowledge!). The New York Times costs more than, say, the New York Post because it's presumed that there is more valuable, expensive content inside. And generally, that is a true statement.

So the consumer's price for a newspaper is not intended to charge them - really, it functions only to arrange the value of newspapers relative to themselves. It is not set up to provide a barrier for consumers.

Newspapers, therefore, have always given away the store. So why change now? Because newspapers don't understand the online business model (which, hint hint, doesn't have the same rules as the paper game).

This sounds like the typical protective musings of someone on the editorial side. And in this rare instance, I must disagree.

If newspapers begin charging for their articles - even those most basic news articles - no one will read them. Why should I pay for it when I can just go to a newsstand, read it quickly, and walk off without paying? In an era where newspapers can't seem to cover anything but the top stories, a reader won't care if it's original reporting or not. It essentially says the same thing. Who cares who spoke to who to get the story? (Here's a hint: only another journalist)

What's worse, if newspapers begin controlling their content - get yourself ready for some 1984-style, DRM-infused "content" (my, what a buzzword in journalism!) - expect readers to abandon ship en masse to another paper, or worse, a blog. If the Chronicle or its parent company Hearst begins to charge for its content, don't expect the newspaper to tread water for much longer.

Is that what you want to happen, Lazarus? The general public will soon get their news from unsourced blogs and AP wire snippets? Or worse, Wikimedia will begin WikiNews! How's that for original content? Talk about education for the masses!

Journalists and academics everywhere should be smacking their foreheads in disgust at this proposal.

So what's the solution? Ads. Charge more for ads. You newspaper people jumped into the online game and thought you couldn't get any money for advertisements online. Well, you were surprised, because you did - although it seems that you're not getting enough money for them.

Why is that?

Because newspapers are undercutting their own profits by refusing to cease printing paper copies. Paper nostalgia aside, think of the business dynamic - why should an advertiser pay the same $60,000 for one-third of a page in USA Today as it could for online? The advertiser knows it reaches more readers with paper copies. What's the incentive, unless it's a tech- or youth-oriented advertiser?

By continuing to produce a version of its "content" that competes with its newer, digital incarnation, newspapers are undercutting their own profits. The reality is newspapers are offering too many options from their portfolio. And that, my friends, is why online advertising hasn't become the savior that everyone wants it to be.

But nay, you say! Won't the advertisers just leave altogether?

Well, if the majority of newspapers switched over to digital content, they won't really have a choice, will they? Advertisers have money to offer. Newspapers have distribution and consumer reach to offer. From a business standpoint, closing the digital-print rift mends the split nature of advertising funds. These businesses are set up to need each other. But right now, there's an imbalance, and newspapers need advertisers more than vice-versa.

So David? No, I don't think newspapers should control their content - or charge more for it - any more than they already do.

Because at the end of the day, you can't publish a paper that no one reads.