RL Journalism, a weak link?

[JohnM]

34 minutes ago, Futtocks said:

For the Grauniad, Gavin Willacy usually digs up obscure nuggets and left-field observations. Aaron Bower does the more regular mainstream coverage. Which other national newspapers have two people covering our sport on a regular basis?

Then there's the regular and copious NRL content coming from their Australian operation; another thing that the other nationals don't even bother to try and match.

It might be interesting how these guys make a living, given the poor sales of the Guardian and their begging bowl approach to their on-line edition. 

I expect, though I can't prove it, that most LE readers want game news, club news, match previews and reviews, expansion, punditry etc. more than they want to read about someone searching out existential-threatening skeletons in the small cupboards of our relatively small sport in the UK. 

I mean, we are not talking of the Post Office /Horizon situation, or even the Crypto Queen scandal where thousands of people have lost millions and lost their freedom. 

Yes, the saga of Nigel Woods compensation,  the goings on at Bradford over the years, are all issues for investigation, but there has to be a solid and sustainable business to support that. 

[Man of Kent]

40 minutes ago, Bondi Cannon said:

OK, so I actually work as an investigative journalist and just wanted to echo what JD has said here. Some of my stories take several months to deliver; the cost of the legal advice alone would head comfortably into four figures on most of them. I work for a major news organisation and feel very lucky to have my job - my company employs around 400-odd journalists, but there's only about ten doing my kind of work because it is so costly. The prospect of a sports journalism outlet being able to run and fund such an operation is impossible, esp given most mainstream media doesn't bother any more. So I suppose I am saying give these guys a break!

That’s nice ‘n’ all but I’m not talking about Panama Papers, Wikileaks, Sunday Times Insight or Private Eye etc etc level of investigation. 

Let’s take a look at a hot topic of the day. The government emergency loan. A big deal for British rugby league, I’m sure we all agree. Unprecedented etc.

What are the terms? When does it have to be paid back? Is it a £16m lump sum paid to the RFL or do clubs have to apply individually to the government? Who has applied? Are there any strings attached? Can the RFL use it themselves?   

As far as I’m aware, none of this is public knowledge via the press even though it’s public money. 

[JohnM]

8 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

That’s nice ‘n’ all but I’m not talking about Panama Papers, Wikileaks, Sunday Times Insight or Private Eye etc etc level of investigation. 

Let’s take a look at a hot topic of the day. The government emergency loan. A big deal for British rugby league, I’m sure we all agree. Unprecedented etc.

What are the terms? When does it have to be paid back? Is it a £16m lump sum paid to the RFL or do clubs have to apply individually to the government? Who has applied? Are there any strings attached? Can the RFL use it themselves?   

As far as I’m aware, none of this is public knowledge via the press even though it’s public money. 

It's not the hot topic of the day. 

[Man of Kent]

13 minutes ago, JohnM said:

It's not the hot topic of the day. 

Haven’t you heard? There’s a nasty bug going around that’s closed all the shops (mostly) 

[JohnM]

The terms of the emergency loan to the RFL are not the first things on the minds of normal fans. 

[Angelic Cynic]

It would have been nice to have some transparency on costs.

Whatever newspaper and magazine prices were,it was printed on the front of the production and paid on purchase.

I was under the impression,apparently incorrectly,that the number of 'clicks' for online stuff was the equivalent of the cash paid price.

If the fact of the matter is that what is read online also funds the journalists then perhaps some information and desired payment,up front,can be printed out.Perhaps starting on the 1st of a month.

It all seems very haphazard and ad hoc to a technophobe like myself who never has been a follower of fashion.I think this Luddite attitude exists in others,and unless we are given the necessary information may never change. 

  Some of us also prefer to pay in English money,not dollars.

[John Drake]

13 hours ago, Man of Kent said:

Good man.

Anyway, isn’t it a bit of cop out if publishers essentially blame their readers (or lack of them) for the quality (or lack of it) of their output?

I wasn't attempting a cop out at all in my earlier post, just explaining the reality of the news/publishing industry in the age of the internet.

Fewer people pay to read news these days, no matter what format it is presented in. There will be loads of different reasons why that is the case, but it is still an inescapable fact.

That means publishers have to cut costs or face going out of business completely.

It means fewer journalists, fewer photographers, fewer pages, less to spend on legal advice which means fewer risks will be taken in what is published, less promotional activity, sometimes whole titles closed down to safeguard others for a little while longer, and the further those things are cut, the harder it is to protect the overall quality of the end product.

If anyone has a solution to reverse this trend, there will be a lot of publishers queuing up for it.

[John Drake]

2 hours ago, Angelic Cynic said:

It would have been nice to have some transparency on costs.

Whatever newspaper and magazine prices were,it was printed on the front of the production and paid on purchase.

I was under the impression,apparently incorrectly,that the number of 'clicks' for online stuff was the equivalent of the cash paid price.

If the fact of the matter is that what is read online also funds the journalists then perhaps some information and desired payment,up front,can be printed out.Perhaps starting on the 1st of a month.

It all seems very haphazard and ad hoc to a technophobe like myself who never has been a follower of fashion.I think this Luddite attitude exists in others,and unless we are given the necessary information may never change. 

  Some of us also prefer to pay in English money,not dollars.

A 'click' on its own generates zero revenue to a publisher. The reader gets their content 'free' but the publisher receives nothing in return. It's an unsustainable model for publishers who pay journalists to create content.

A click on an online advert might generate a few pennies, but you need tens of thousands of ad clicks to begin to get anywhere near the kind of revenue a paid-for ad in a print publication, added to the cover price of the print publication would once have generated.

A paywall, whereby a website can restrict access to some or all of its content, in exchange for an upfront payment from the customer, is one way of generating revenue online, and we have introduced this system on TotalRL.com this year, to allow us to publish content that would once have been available only in the print edition of League Express/Rugby League World, online too. Not all of our content is behind the paywall, and we allow people to read two 'premium' pieces a week for free, before prompting the reader to subscribe via the paywall.

It costs £1.50 per week, or a fiver a month, for unlimited access to all the content we publish on TotalRL.com.

[unapologetic pedant]

4 hours ago, John Drake said:

I wasn't attempting a cop out at all in my earlier post, just explaining the reality of the news/publishing industry in the age of the internet.

Fewer people pay to read news these days, no matter what format it is presented in. There will be loads of different reasons why that is the case, but it is still an inescapable fact.

That means publishers have to cut costs or face going out of business completely.

It means fewer journalists, fewer photographers, fewer pages, less to spend on legal advice which means fewer risks will be taken in what is published, less promotional activity, sometimes whole titles closed down to safeguard others for a little while longer, and the further those things are cut, the harder it is to protect the overall quality of the end product.

If anyone has a solution to reverse this trend, there will be a lot of publishers queuing up for it.

The more-expensive-to-produce investigative stories tend to be about off-field dirt. My guess is that most RL fans are more interested in the type of on-field-related content which, unless I`m missing something, only requires the journalists` personal knowledge and a modest amount of research to produce.

Absolutely true that once something is free it fosters a sense of entitlement, but there remain a lot of people who are happy to pay but don`t fully trust a virtual system of payment.