What Is The Cost of Your Attention?
Before Fake News, before Yellow Journalism, there was Benjamin Day, who ran a newspaper called The Sun. The Sun was started on September 3rd, 1833 with a revolutionary new business model: "Resell the attention of the audience otherwise known as advertising" (Timothy Wu, The Attention Merchants). Before The Sun, newspapers were a form of media, only for the elite. The stories typically focused on three areas: politics, business, and reviews (books and plays). This changed with Benjamin Day who focused on creating stories about real people, but with a twist. Here's how The Sun forever changed the media industry.
The Penny Press, a newspaper that sold for one cent. The typical newspaper in 1833 cost six cents. The everyday man couldn't afford this. Benjamin Day decided to sell his newspaper for one cent; this wasn't a new idea, but it had never succeeded at scale. The Transcript in Boston attempted this but failed. In Britain, The Penny Magazine achieved initial success with gaining circulation of over 200,000 readers, but never earned a profit. However, this seemed to work for The Sun. The paper achieved sustainable success by making a combination of innovative selling techniques and changing demographics.
Changing the way people bought newspapers. Before The Sun, newspapers were delivered to homes on a subscription basis by newspaper publishers or via mail. Benjamin Day, though, popularized the concept of the newspaper hawker. The newspaper hawker would buy The Sun wholesale. They would then sell it on the street or to people who wanted a subscription. Hawkers were typically children and would yell outlandish statements to gain the attention of prospective buyers (the phrase, "extra, extra read all about it" stems from this trend). Great sales require a great product. The Sun learned that early on in its development.
"It shines for all", the slogan of The Sun. The goal was to be the newspaper for the layperson. Benjamin Day was going to make that happen. The middle-class literacy rates were increasing and people wanted news. He wanted to create stories focused on real people. His first hire was George Wisner, the first ever newspaper reporter. His job was to go down to the police court every day to report on crimes. The style and manner in his writing connected with everyday people. In November 1833, George Wisner wrote about a domestic dispute:
“Mr and Mrs Townsend made their appearance this morning to settle their connubial disputes after the manner the law has prescribed. It appeared on investigation, that Mrs Townsend asked her husband yesterday for a two shilling piece to buy some brandy 'to wash the children's heads;' that the husband not believing that his lady would allow the spiritous liquid to go as high as the head, without saluting it with her lips, refused to grant the request; a quarrel ensued, and Mr Townsend was driven out of the house by the infuriated dame. Last evening, when Mr T. returned from his work to get his supper, he found his wife in an unmentionable condition, and upon his upbraiding her, she took up the tongs and smote him over the head. Mr T. then knocked her down. They were both committed.”
Does this type of writing remind you of something? Perhaps, TMZ, Daily Mail or Page Six? That's because George Wisner’s pioneering technique was the beginning of gossip writing. He was the original Walter Winchell (If you haven't watched the Plot Against America, I recommend it). Yet, one day, The Sun took it too far.
"Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made", read the headline of The Sun on August 21, 1835. The story would go on to describe how Sir John Herschel, a famed astronomer, discovered aliens and a new civilization on the moon. This story was not written by Sir John Herschel, but was instead completely fabricated by The Sun. The story skyrocketed subscription requests, and even after it was discovered to be a hoax, circulation didn't wane. What's more absurd is that the newspaper never issued a retraction for the column. This leads me to The Sun’s final innovation, advertising.
The audience is the product. When you undercut the competition in a thin-margin business, you need to figure out a new stream of revenue. Benjamin Day decided that his would be the audience. While newspaper advertising had been in existence for a while, it was mainly focused on classified ads. Classified ads were usually one or two lines and in a specific section of the newspaper. Instead, The Sun would run full-page ads that, at times, looked like stories. In less than a year, the paper was profitable, the most circulated newspaper in New York City. This helped to prove that fake news doesn't distract an audience, but rather attracts one.
As I began this essay with a quote from Timothy Wu and his book, The Attention Merchants. I'd like to close with another quote from him, "The race to a bottomless bottom, appealing to what one might call the audience’s baser instincts, poses a fundamental, continual dilemma for the attention merchant—just how far will he go to get his harvest?"
So I ask you, what is the cost of your attention? How much would you pay for someone else's?
Postscript: This post was inspired by the chapter, "The First Attention Merchants" from Timothy Wu's book, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. Fun fact, The Sun is also home to the most circulated editorial of all time: "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"