The News Ain't Free. Neither is Social Media

OPINION

Since the Herald launched its website, I’ve had a few calls from people asking why the online version of the Herald does not cost less than the print edition of the Herald. I thought I’d address this, since it is on the minds of some people.

First, I’d like to remind all of those in the Cove community that if you like having a reliable news source, you do indeed have to pay for it. Somehow, over the last decade or so, it has gotten into the heads of some people that news should be free. Well, it’s not. And it can’t be. News is like anything else that you buy. If you want it to be available when you want it and reliable and useful, then it’s going to cost you something.

The cost of social media

Perhaps the mistake that people make is they see news posted to Facebook or other social media sites and think that it is free. It is not. Someone paid for it. In fact, you the viewer paid for it. You just didn’t pay cash. Let me explain.

First, please remember that reliable news is not gathered by people working for free. Journalists have to be paid just like anyone else. Whether you’re working in a factory, a grocery store, a restaurant or an office, you expect your employer to pay you for your work. The same goes for those reporters who go to work every day and find out what’s going on and write it up.

Second, if you think auto-logging on to Facebook or Snapchat and checking out the news costs you nothing, I’m sorry to tell you that you’ve been scammed. You are paying a pretty high price for that service. You might not notice it because companies like Google and Facebook and Snapchat are very good at hiding their price.

“What are you talking about?” you might be wondering. “I don’t pay for Facebook.”

Well, not in cash. But you are paying with your privacy. And you’re donating something very valuable to those online social media companies. You’re telling them where you live, how much you make, what your hobbies are, what you do for a living and when you’re in the market for a car or a house or a new pair of shoes.

Those companies take that information and bundle you with a bunch of other similar people and sell it to advertisers. They make a lot of money doing that.

This is why if you look up the price of a woven basket or a set of brake pads on Amazon, you will soon see ads for baskets and brake pads popping up on the websites you visit, including those social media sites you use.

You’ve been sold.

Want to do something scary? Find out just what Google and Facebook know about you and what they sell to advertisers. They know what your politics are, they know how many kids you have and they know what you look at secretly online that you don’t want anyone else to know about.

Don’t take my word for it. Both Facebook and Google will tell you exactly what they know about you. You just have to jump through a few hoops.

I jumped through those hoops last fall and I was appalled at what they know about me. Google in particular had hundreds of megabytes of info on me, all organized neatly into folders. (That’s the equivalent of thousands of pages of data, by the way. And I avoid using social media.)

If you’re brave enough to find out how much these companies know about you, check these out:

https://www.wired.com/story/google-tracks-you-privacy/

and this:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/all-the-data-facebook-google-has-on-you-privacy

Google and Facebook are two of the richest and most successful companies on the planet – possibly in the entire history of human businesses. And they’re selling YOU. Where do you think they get all that money? Still think all that social media fun is free?

OK, but the Herald website ....

Now that you know that online news is not at all free, please note that the Herald must indeed charge for the news we gather for you.

Herald reporters and accountants and circulation managers and van drivers other employees need to be paid. The Herald needs to provide employees with benefits and pay for the building, the heat, the lights and the computers that we use.

Those costs are pretty much the same whether we give you the news printed on paper or show it to you on a website.

“OK, yes,” people ask, “but don’t you save the costs of printing and mailing when you put the news online?”

Yes, we do. Obviously, news stories and photos posted to the Herald website don’t have to be printed or mailed. But they do incur the 2019 equivalent of those costs.

Instead of printing and mailing, the online Herald requires that we pay for the costs of hosting all those stories and photos. We don’t have enough digital storage to save all that stuff and we don’t have the expertise to manage it even if we did store it locally. So we pay someone to do that for us. And trust me, reliable storage and backup of all that data is not cheap.

Of course, we also have to pay for the software to display it for you online. And we have to pay for the fast internet connections to get the information up online so you can view it with a few clicks of your mouse.

We may not be killing any trees to bring you the online Herald, but we sure are moving a lot of electrons around. And in the Year 2019, all that tech stuff is just as expensive as printing it on paper and mailing it.

You’re doing a good thing

Please don’t take this column as a gripe. I have no problem answering questions from Herald readers about why we do what we do. I appreciate that some people care enough to ask.

So let me make one point that I have made before.

The Vindicator, the daily newspaper that covered Youngstown, Ohio, for a century and a half, is closing. The family-owned newspaper recently announced that the newspaper that has been serving the community since 1869 is closing. It’s not alone. In the last 15 years, nearly one in five newspapers has closed, according to the University of North Carolina’s Center for Innovation and Stability in Local Media.

That’s a lot of American communities left without a reliable news source.

And if you don’t think that can happen here, you’re wrong. Up until July 26, I would have said that there would never be a police-officer-involved shooting in the Cove. I would even have bet money. I would have been wrong.

The Cove has a long history of being frugal and careful with its money. I understand and appreciate that. The Herald has always, under all its owners, respected that and held the line on price increases as best it could.

But if that frugality extends to not paying for local news, then the Herald is likely to follow the Vindicator’s path. It’s not free.

Don’t get me wrong. The Herald is not in financial trouble. I’m not asking for any special consideration or donations.

What I am asking is for your understanding that when the Herald asks for 85 cents an edition – about $45 a year – we are not grasping greedily for your wallet. We’re just trying to pay our bills.

Let me be especially blunt here. I, the publisher of the Herald, hold a second job to help pay my family’s bills. That is a bit difficult for me to put into print publicly, but I hope it helps drive home my point. No one here at the Herald is getting rich.

The Herald pays its bills every week and we hope that the subscriptions come in. We hope that advertisers will see the value in reaching our audience. We cut back where we can – and we ask that you understand that we are not overcharging you for an edition of the Herald.

If you want there to be a Herald, then please help pay for it. There’s no way around that equation. No matter how we get the news to you, print or online, those same bills have to be paid every single week.

So if you appreciate what the Herald does for you and for the Cove community, then please – subscribe and visit the advertisers you see in the Herald. Tell them that you saw their ad in the Herald.

If you do, we will live one more week to print one more edition and post one more edition online – and pay our bills one more week.