I’m potentially blowing my chance at more freebies (I’m still reading “When the Lights Went Out“), but when organisations get in touch with me I tend to blog about the fact they’ve got in touch rather than covering the story straight. I don’t think this blog’s readers would care if I got paid to talk about something, but I know they’d rather I was upfront about it, and I think parroting press releases whoever they’re from is the last thing people want.
I don’t sell advertising space either. The simple reason for that is that the content is the product, even if there’s no price attached for you. When a blog sells advertising space then you are the product – access to you eyes is what’s being sold to advertisers. The content becomes little more than bait.
I refuse to be bait. But I’ve digressed. The point is that every now and again people do send me stuff. For example, today I was given a sneak preview of the Economist’s new advertising campaign, which I presume as gone live now, featuring a man taking a tour of a city via a network of tightropes. It’s quite cool – done by the same guy that made that free-running ident for BBC, dontchaknow, but that’s not what interests me.
What interests me is that the Economist itself is trying to grow and expand its readership – despite the recession, despite the doom and gloom surrounding print based media – and that new media is clearly important to them in trying to reach the ‘intellectually curious’. In other words, they’re doing exactly what everyone should be doing in difficult times: Trying harder – this goes down well in Gore Towers.
They’re hoping that because of the increase in numbers going to University there’s potentially another 3 million people out there that could be readers. I don’t imagine for a second they expect that kind of readership, but for a fleeting moment it feels like there’s a glimmer of hope for a fightback against fetishisation of … well… stupidity. Time for a bit of geek pride?
We’re here! We’re intellectually curious! Get used to it! I’d actually quite like to live in a world were listening to Radio 4 and reading magazines like the Economist wasn’t considered deviant for people like me, but then if it wasn’t I probably wouldn’t do it. Ho hum.
Whether the Economist’s New Media strategy goes beyond using political bloggers as a very direct way of reaching their target demographic to sell paper magazines or they can use their enthusiasm for liberal economics – and hunger for growth – to begin that all important migration to making the online content profitable remains to be seen. I’ll leave that sort of industry speculation to Guido, I think.
Nick said...
2 Jul 09 at 2:47 am
Well I know at least a few potential subscribers who would become avid readers if the Economist actually lived up to its name, and actually analysed economic evidence, but hell, I guess it is only another magazine in the end: http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2009/07/the_economist_a_1.html
Letters From A Tory said...
2 Jul 09 at 9:57 am
The Economist has only let paid subscribers get access to their online content for as long as I can remember.
I suspect that Murdoch et al are now considering a similar pricing plan to save them from financial oblivion.
Oranjepan said...
3 Jul 09 at 2:33 am
Since when was economics about nothing more than raw data? Economic data relates to the real world and it must be applied to the real world, so it’s important to remember to continue to search for information which doesn’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet so that you can explain why your barcharts are misleading (or not).
That said I really quite like the politics of the extreme centre subscribed to by the Economist, though I’m not wholly convinced. I’m also not convinced by your anti-commercial attitude, freckles. I use ads because they break up the text on my blog and I’m generally too lazy or uninspired to find good pictures. I mean, there’s a difference between original content and good content, and though I know everyone would rather have both at the same time and many of us strive for originality, solid rock-steady goodness is like shredded wheat for breakfast… oops, I’m corrupted.
Charlotte Gore said...
3 Jul 09 at 2:36 am
It’s not an anti-commercial attitude so much as a preference for a nice clean site free of clutter and distracting junk
DavidNcl said...
4 Jul 09 at 8:17 pm
“That said I really quite like the politics of the extreme centre subscribed to by the Economist, though I’m not wholly convinced”
For me, the centre you refer to is about 76.2 light years to the left. The ecomomist is a left wing rag.
Henry North London said...
5 Jul 09 at 12:44 pm
I have 13 years of back issues, I better get on and read them Does anyone want thirteen years worth of back issues of the economist?
Advertising When I started the blog in earnest and learnt about blogging I needed money, so I put ads on the blog, I may actually remove them as I have to date got a piffling 38 pence from Google so far.
mdc said...
5 Jul 09 at 1:35 pm
You listen to R4 and read The Economist? Since I became a lib, but of these things frustrate me too much to bother with.