Journalists deserve low pay

The demise of the news business can be halted, but only if journalists commit to creating real value for consumers and become more involved in setting the course of their companies.

By Robert G. Picard

Oxford, England:

Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted.

Actually, journalists deserve low pay.

Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days.

Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models.

Where does value come from?

The primary value that is created today comes from the basic underlying value of the labor of journalists. Unfortunately, that value is now near zero.

The total value is the value of content plus the value of advertising. However, advertisers don't care about journalism – only the audience that it produces. Thus the real measure of journalistic value is value created by serving readers.

What are journalists worth?

Economic outcomes have traditionally held low priority for journalists. That's got to change.

Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians. Consequently, the primary economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others. In this process three fundamental functions and related skills have historically created economic value: Accessing sources, determining significance of information, and conveying it effectively.

Read the whole article at www.csmonitor.com/2009/0519/p09s02-coop.html

(Robert G. Picard is a professor of media economics at Sweden's Jonkoping University. He blogs at http://themediabusiness.blogspot.com/)