Would you pay for news? Will you?
Pay walls, bandwidth metering, content curation, ad supported web media, rapping readers on the head with a wooden spoon; the average journalist has numerous zany schemes all aiming to return our scripture to the days of profitability.
Will they work? I think not, but at this point, folks are willing to try anything.
Charlie Smith, editor of the Georgia Straight, attempted to paint a picture of print's decline on July 27 by comparing the value of several national newspapers, now owned by Postmedia.
"In 12 years, a chain that was worth more than $2.8 billion in the eyes of the Asper family has shrunk to just over one per cent of that amount," he wrote, pointing to a post bubble-burst swap that included papers like the Montreal Gazette, Calgary Herald, Vancouver Sun and others.
Today as I write this column, Postmedia's market capitalization (roughly, the total value of its shares) sits below the $46 million mark.
Welcome to the creative age, where everyone can publish, photograph, film, paint, or blow something up - and share it on-line for free.
The tools of creation are so widely available and the massive impact it's having is both troubling and exciting. Mostly exciting, if you ask me.
Take our digital cameras, for example. A cool $700 is all an average consumer needs to begin a foray into the world of high-end photography.
It wasn't long ago when this venture required intimate knowledge of chemicals, hours of trial and error, hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of equipment, film, paper and more.
All of that expertise, all of that discovery, manipulation, creativity and the bending of standards has effectively been reduced to a binary series of ones and zeroes, programmed into a little plastic box.
Flicking a switch to auto or program ('P' for pro, as shutterbugs like to joke) allows the user to instantly and effortlessly reap the benefits of centuries in optics research.
The same is true for most of our creative technologies, electronic devices that contain the wisdom of previous pioneers all the way back to Newton.
But now that humanity has an unprecedented level of access to these tools, both as consumers and producers, the marketability of creativity has suffered.
Can a paywall fix the problem? Allow me to speculate with a resounding 'heck no.'
Storytelling pre-dates the market. It is essential to our social fabric and attempting to monetize it is a mission wrought with peril. We don't do this for money.
Lost in the debate has been a massive change in the way we create. Before industry, artists and shoemakers toiled from beginning to end to make goods themselves. Machines later split those tasks across many hands using assembly lines and the like.
Now production is swiftly returning to the people - we individuals have become the masters of creation, free to share or sell our wares and crafts as we see fit.
Creators no longer need to be members of associations, unions, guilds or corporations. They can do it alone and so can you.
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This young reporter is off to the next gig. Starting in a couple weeks, you'll find me at one of our sister papers, the Nanaimo Daily News.
All the best, Sunshine Coast. It's been an incredible experience and you will be missed.
