Apple’s tablet might change the way writers and photographers are paid
// December 3rd, 2009 // Media, News, platform
Today I watched an amazing video demo from Time Inc., showing some of the things they can do with Sports Illustrated magazine when it’s available on devices like the rumoured Apple Tablet. The video in question is reproduced just below, for your future-reading pleasure. While watching the reader navigate their own way around the publication not just on a page-order basis but subhead and by image or video, it occurred to me: this could really change the way ‘real’ (read: print) journalists and photographers get paid for their work.
At the moment, most of the journalists in the world who still have paying work are paid by newspapers and magazines. And most of those journalists — whether on staff or freelance — are paid either by the number of words or pictures published, or paid a salary.
When you watch this video, take a moment to consider how much the reader is able to customise their reading material. It’s almost like no reader will read the magazine the same way. When you think about it, that’s probably true with most readers of print publications today; most of us start at the front and flip pages, but many of us start on a favourite section and hop around from section to section.
But readers on a Tablet will be sending back pageview and session time data to a server somewhere, and a tablet content publishing platform worth its hosting bill will be able to tell a publisher exactly which pages and which graphics were viewed by each reader, and how long they spent there.
For the first time in mainstream publishing it will be possible to know the worth of every page of copy and every image or video, in terms of views and time spent. As media publishers are under cost and revenue pressures right now, how long will it be before some of them decide to pay journalists and photographers based on the actual time the audience was engaged with their material? How long will it be before we learn whether that high-falutin’ conservative columnist is really worth four times the hard-working kid on the sports results every weekend? How long before freelance journalists, photographers and video journalists are paid on a metric based on the audience their content attracted and engaged with?
To the blogger community out there, this will come as old news — they’ve been on the bleeding edge of this new content publishing economy for years — but in the old-school media companies it could be a rude shock. The bad news from the blogosphere is that getting paid for your audience pays way less than getting paid a nice salary associated only with your job title, and to some extent, your experience measured in years and the list of other mastheads you’ve worked for in the past.
The good news is: the ad possibilities showcased in the video from Time, Inc. look really exciting. On a bright, hi-resolution screen on your lap, why wouldn’t you click on a few to see what they do? More time and interaction with ads means more potential ad revenue, and more ad revenue might mean more to share with journalists. I only hope print media publishers don’t make the same mistake as the online portal publishers and pepper their front pages with ads that take over your entire screen to show you a painfully craptastically adapted television commercial before you get to read your headlines. Dear Mr Jobs: please make a ban on such indignities a condition of licensing the Tablet publishing tools!
