The future of local news is in your hands

Several years ago, someone posted a notice on social media that there had been a terrible crash in Fremont.

The post included the specific intersection where the crash reportedly occurred. Social media followers quickly posted comments saying they were praying for the victims.

I sent a reporter to the scene. He arrived promptly at the location listed in the post. There was nothing there. He drove further up the road, still nothing. He backtracked a bit. Checked the cross streets. No crash. No first responders.

Back at the office, the reporter called police dispatch. They had received no reports of a crash.

I kicked myself for wasting the reporter’s time by believing that this social media post was so specific it had to be accurate. Not so.

Social media is great for keeping up with friends and family and watching videos of water skiing squirrels. But when it comes to reporting the news, you just can’t trust it.

I bring this up because The News-Messenger and News Herald recently made some changes to our online news sites, and some readers are not pleased that they are now being asked to pay for news.

While a “paywall” has been in place for years, limiting the number of free articles available, if a reader followed a social media link to our websites it did not count toward the free-story limit.

That policy changed last month. Now readers can access five free stories in a 30-day period, regardless of how they get to the website. After that they are directed to a page where they can purchase a subscription.

People are not used to paying for news. Not yet, anyway. And it’s the news media’s own fault, after giving their product away for free for so many years.

In the early days of the internet, most newspaper honchos thought of online websites as necessary distractions. Few if any realized that the tail would someday be wagging the dog. That day has arrived, with smart phones and tablets now the fastest-growing market for digital news.

Steve Jobs was the innovator who introduced Apple’s iPhone in 2007 and the iPad tablet in 2010, revolutionizing the way people consume information.

One of the last projects Jobs undertook before his death in 2011 was to try to develop a subscription hub in which readers could sign up for online news, part of the iTunes concept that works so well for music and videos.

“Anything that we can do to help The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal find new ways of expression so they can afford to get paid, so they can afford to keep their editorial operations intact, I’m all for it,” Jobs said at a 2010 conference, according to an article by Jeff Sonderman on poynter.org.

Jobs was a businessman as well as a visionary who understood that it costs money to produce the news, from paying the salaries and benefits of professional journalists to buying computers, software, and office supplies.

Our staff verifies the facts before reporting them. We are accountable for what we write. That’s not the case with many Facebook users or bloggers who can write (or Photoshop) virtually anything, including a fourth-hand report from the neighbor of a cousin who knows a policeman who was at the crash scene.

Readers who hit the paywall on our news sites might want to stop and think about why they are being asked to subscribe. Seems to me they are interested in the journalism we provide, or they would not reach their limit for free stories.

“I think people are willing to pay for content,” Jobs said at the 2010 Engadget conference. “I believe it for music and video, and I believe it for the media.”

Jobs realized that journalism serves a vital role in our society.

“Well I think the foundation of a free society is a free press,” he said at the same 2010 conference. “And we’ve seen what’s happening to papers in the U.S. right now. I think they’re really important. I don’t want to see us descend into a nation of bloggers.”

It’s time for people to shake off old habits and come to terms with the fact that professional journalism is a product worth paying for.

And the price is right: A summer special on digital subscriptions is just 99 cents a month for the first three months. Or you can subscribe to both print and digital news for just $1.95 a week for the first three months.

It’s not just a great deal, it’s a step toward ensuring the future of local news, reported by professional journalists.

David Yonke, the editor of The News-Messenger and the News Herald, was one of the first kids on his block to own an iPad.