Julia Cagé - Saving the Media: Capitalism, Crowdfunding, and Democracy

SAVING THE MEDIA

Capitalism, Crowdfunding, and Democracy

JULIA CAG

Translated by

ARTHUR GOLDHAMMER

THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2016

First published as Sauver les mdias: Capitalisme, financement participatif et dmocratie

ditions du Seuil et La Rpublique des Ides, 2015

Copyright 2016 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All rights reserved

Jacket illustration: Howard Sokol/Getty Images

Jacket design: Graciela Galup

978-0-674-65975-9 (cloth : alk. paper)

978-0-674-96871-4 (EPUB)

978-0-674-96870-7 (MOBI)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Names: Cag, Julia, author. | Goldhammer, Arthur, translator.

Title: Saving the media : capitalism, crowdfunding, and democracy / Julia Cage ; translated by Arthur Goldhammer.

Other titles: Sauver les mdias. English

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016. | First published as Sauver les medias: capitalisme, financement participatif et democratie (c) Editions du Seuil et La Republique des Idees, 2015Title page verso. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015034378

Subjects: LCSH: Mass mediaEconomic aspects.

Classification: LCC P96.E25 C3413 2016 | DDC 338.4/730223dc23 LC record available at

http://lccn.loc.gov/2015034378

1984. BITS OF TORN paper spiral in gusts of wind. Whats the use of hanging on to old newspaper clippings when endless quantities of statistics can be viewed on the telescreen? In George Orwells nightmare vision of the future, the promise of a new era of informationwith screens providing news around the clock like todays cable networksstands in stark contrast to the dark threat of disinformation. Indeed, the hero, a journalist, is employed in faking old issues of the Times in order to make sure that the past corresponds to the new reality.

2015. Screens have invaded our lives, and we communicate in Newspeak on Twitter and Facebook and in text messages and Snapchats. In the age of digital journalism, smartphones, and social networks, information is everywhere. It stares us in the face.

There have never been as many information producers as there are today. France counts more than 4,000 print newspapers and magazines; nearly 1,000 radio stations; several hundred television stations; and tens of thousands of blogs, Twitter accounts, and news aggregators. In the United States, there are nearly 1,000 local television stations, more than 15,000 radio stations, and roughly 1,300 daily papers.

Paradoxically, the media have never been in worse shape. The gross annual revenue of all daily newspapers in the United States is half that of Google, whose business model is based on winnowing content produced by others. Every news item is repeated ad infinitum, often without modification. Leaving aside twenty-four-hour cable news channels, which broadcast the same images over and over again in endless loops, newspapers expend more and more energy racing to publish agency dispatches on their websites, as if a quick finger on the copy-and-paste button were more important than gathering the news in the first place. Meanwhile, they regularly trim staff in their press rooms. The media production system simply cannot tolerate unlimited competition among ever-increasing numbers of players.

In the world of the media, these are the best of times and the worst of times. There is some reason for optimism: never have there been so many newspaper readers. The readership numbers are dazzlingso much so that certain sites (mainly blogs) pay their contributors on the basis of traffic generated.

Yet the statistics showing tens of millions of Internet viewers are highly misleading. The underlying reality is far less hopeful. Although newspapers are reaching growing numbers of readers through online sites, they have been unable to monetize their new digital audience. Indeed, in chasing the online ad revenue on which they are convinced their future depends, newspapers have sacrificed the quality they need to keep up their print circulation without generating sufficient compensatory income from their online presence. They are slowly sinking, awaiting their ultimate demise.

The media are experiencing a serious crisis. It would be easy to multiply examples of print media laying off workers and newspapers going out of business around the world. In 2012 France lost two national dailies, France-Soir and La Tribune. In 2014 the Nice-Matin Group, which ended 2013 with an operating loss of 6 million euros, was placed in receivership. The newspaper Libration, which narrowly avoided bankruptcy, laid off a third of its employees at the beginning of 2015 while Le Figaro organized voluntary departures and Sud-Ouest cut its staff sharply. In Germany more than 1,000 media jobs disappeared in 2013, and in Spain some 200 media outlets vanished between 2008 and 2012. Things were little better in the United States. The website Newspaper Death Watch mourns the disappearance of twelve local dailies since 2007 and notes an equal number on the way out, leaving many markets without a daily paper.

The crisis has affected more than just the print media. In late 2013 France Televisions (the French public national television broadcaster) proposed a voluntary departure plan affecting 361 jobs while in early 2015 Radio France (the public service radio broadcaster) experienced the longest strike in its history as the government slashed its budget and began withdrawing financial support. In the United Kingdom, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announced in 2014 that it would eliminate 220 jobs in its news division by 2016 under a plan dubbed Delivering Quality First, designed to give priority to quality broadcasting. British humor. Then it announced that 1,000 jobs would be cut in July 2015 owing to a decrease in revenue from the license fee that finances the public broadcasting service in Britainicing on a cake that was becoming more indigestible by the hour.

One crucial fact: there is nothing new about this crisis. It did not begin with the advent of the Internet or the financial collapse of 2008. We tend to forget that with each new technological innovationradio, television, the Internetthe print media and their newer competitors have howled at the intensification of competition, which they were certain meant impending death. Even in the United States, where advertising is king, newspaper ad revenue has been declining as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) since 1956.

Still, the crisis has grown radically worse in recent years. The traditional media are under siege, with their backs to the wall. News is borrowed, relayed, and duplicated without compensation, even though it is costly to produce. More news than ever pours from the cornucopia, but the media themselves are on their last legs. Consider this historical irony: mile de Girardin, who created the penny press in France and is often touted as one of the first media entrepreneurs, began his career in 1828 with Le Voleur (The Thief), a weekly that filled its pages with the best items of the week stolen from other publications.

Citizens, whether aware of these developments or not, are increasingly distrustful of the traditional media. In France, although interest in the news remains high, less than a quarter of people surveyed say they trust the media. According to a 2014 Gallup poll, only 22 percent of Americans trust their newspapers, only 19 percent trust the Internet, and only 18 percent trust televised news. Why such suspicion?