Would You Pay To Read This?
There's a lot of talk within the journalism profession these days about how to get people to pay for content on the internet when almost all of it can be accessed for free.
Newspaper companies across the nation are quickly going broke as they sink financial resources into quality journalism and photography for their websites praying that they can sell enough advertising banners on their websites to pay for it all.
The problem is that they can't.
And with the economy dragging everyone down like a spider-web weighted with a rock, marketers have cut their marketing budgets, making the newspapers' bottom line look even more in the red than it was before.
Add to the newspapers' problem a little thing called Google.
Google likes to make everything accessible to everyone and doesn't play favorites when it comes to how it organizes its search engine results for something newsy like say, "Buffalo plane crash."
You type those words into Google search and the first result was a link to the China News, then the London Free Press, then several from Yahoo's news aggregator and THEN, at fifth place in line, the Los Angeles Times.
Google is the internet's great democratizer. Just because the New York Times may be the Old Gray Lady of journalism doesn't mean she's going to get in the front row.
So, when you think about it, Google plays fair. But that's not what the traditional newspapers have been used to for over a hundred years.
Not only are they taking a blow to their bottom line on the web, but now, the web, which is essentially "Google", let's face it, is deflating their egos at the same time (and making a crap load of money at it.)
And they're starting to get pissed.
Now they have an idea to start charging website visitors iTunes-like micropayments to view news articles (thus, the focus of a recent TIME Magazine cover story, seen above.)
Up until recently, there's been a number of venture capital-backed companies that have tried to get this idea off the ground but to no avail.
But now, internet financial processing software has come far enough where it could possibly work and make the pay-for-read experience for us consumers relatively easy to experience.
The idea would be to have you sign up on the newspaper or magazine's website with your credit/debit card information and as you moved around the web site and saw something you wanted to read, you would click on a "Purchase" button and the 99cent payment (called micropayments) would automatically be deducted from your account, just as it is on ITunes, Amazon or Snocap.
It sounds like it would work, right?
The problem, as with music, is that the majority of the public are used to getting this content for free so how are we going to train them to start paying for it (again?)
In all honesty, I'm really not too sure.
One theory is that if you just go and lock up all of your web content behind such a payment system, you may lose 50% of your regular website traffic, but the other 50% that would begin to pay for your content, piece-by-piece, would more than make up in revenue what you lost in advertising dollars because your web traffic declined.
It could work but it's risky and a lot of major companies don't like taking risks.
Like the American auto industry.
What's the rule in business?
If you don't risk, you die.
But, let's say that they could get us to start paying for articles and photographs and charts and such, what would it mean then for financially-successful, news-linking sites like the Drudge Report, Huffington Post and tons of blogs all over the internet?
They could get crushed.
Because they couldn't just link to a free article anymore. Nor, could they just copy and paste articles onto their own websites.
Or could they?
If newspapers and magazines try and lock up their content behind micropayments, wouldn't it just encourage people to "steal" the content and post if on their websites for free?
Would there have to be an RIAA for journalism organized to go after these pirate sites?
To sue them and take them to court for copyright-infringement?
Well, we know how well that has worked...
I dunno, you tell me what you think.
Is journalism worth paying for?
Or are old, romantic ideas of the career of a journalist gone forever?
11 Comments:
well the problem with "mirco-payments", are the short shelf-life of the product. who wants to pay for news that'll be old by the end of the week? and plus, a story constantly develops as each day rolls by. they obviously need to adapt, in order to survive.
are they honestly selling as many hard copies as they use to? cut down on paper costs, and other production costs involved in creating the physical paper.
another suggestion would be to feature half the articles, or highlights of certain stories online, and leave the rest only accessible with an online subscription.
I could see it working for the wealthier class who already pay a monthly fee to get the New York Times or Wall Street Journal sent to their homes but as for people in small towns such as mine, where you pay $0.75 MAYBE $1.00 per entire newspaper, it wouldn't work out so well. I mean, why would someone pay $.99 for a single article?
Personally, I wouldn't. I would spend just as much money skimming through the articles with interesting headlines as I would going up to the closest store and buying an actual newspaper, which I don't read anyway.
Same for magazines. Again, I would much rather go to the store and buy a copy. Especially with magazines like AP that I like to keep as a sort of memorabilia...you wouldn't be able to do that online.
Like I said, that's just me.
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I'm still a newbie in the game, only being out of college two years and having 1 1/2 years experience at a free community paper and then about six months in television. It's been an interesting crash course to come into the journalist realm at this point in the game...
I certainly have no answers. As I was preparing to find a job, our local daily was taking a hit for locking up all their content online. They finally relented to public opinion and opened their site, but since then they have dropped a weekly community paper and at least 50 employees, namely writers, in the process. Clearly blocking non-subscribers isn't an option.
But neither is paying per article. I hate to say it given this is my industry and I'm certainly no gem, but so much of what's written anymore is sheer crap. Facts are lost, prose forgotten and overall journalism is a sad, lost art. Take a look at your local and national news and count the number of YouTube clips that appear on-air each week. It's sickening.
There are VERY few writers I would pay a hard-earned dollar to read, depending on article length, esp. with money being tight for everyone right now.
The shift to an online paper is inevitable, IMO, and I think the only way daily papers (much less everyone else in the business of the written word) are going to survive is to get extremely creative with web content...and extremely creative QUICKLY.
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i really dont think that its gonna work because if people wanted to know what was in the news, they'd find a different site that didnt charge, or they'd watch the news on the television. Its an interesting idea to bring in some more money, but i really dont see it working out. I like knowing whats going on in my world, but i know i wouldnt pay to read articles on the internet.
Why does the New York Times or USA Today have to be STRICTLY PRINT? I would be cool with a monthly fee to access the online paper, but what if they also gave us video, more interviews, etc. Why just read about a Stimulus bill speech when you can watch it on demand at the New York Times website? Or maybe create an NYTV channel on digital cable to combat the other news channels, it worked well for Fox against CNN.
I don't know the answer either, but I think our news may just go to small staff blogs out there, where they get a few high quality writers. OR, maybe our news becomes a non profit entity so we no longer get fed what Disney, Viacom, G.E., or Rupert Murdoch want us to hear. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise.
Do I think that people would pay in order to read certain articles? Yes. Would college students, or people who struggle to make ends meet pay for certain news articles, not likely. The thing is that the only news I would pay for would be news in regards to music. Otherwise I would turn on the television, which of course I am already paying for. Regardless of money issues, or my personal feelings on it, generally i feel like the overall answer to the question would be the big ol' N O ! It's just like people stealing music, people who are determined would find a loophole if this WERE to be set into place. Then of course there would be lawsuits, honestly it would be a gigantic, enormous mess. In all honesty, the more renound newspapers that report all around news, like sports, current events, world events, etc. have many writers who write more of their opinion then actual fact. It's all biased b.s. anyway, so in my opinion this is a good way to flush out all of the cruddy news articles, and newspaper companies. This would leave the more reputable companies and journalist to take over. Besides magazines, journals, and pamphlets are more accurate anyway, the "world wide web" is filled with cruddy, innacurate information, written or published by those of which are not scholarly resources. So in other words this is a good way to get rid of all the bullshit companies and journalist, making room for the more scholarly journalist reporting more efficiently and accuratley to those who want to know and want to listen. Having said all of that, AP is the shit when it comes to music news, I don't read anything else.
i dont even think it's a question of whether people would pay to read articles on the internets (they won't) it's a matter of copyright law and the now foreign concept of respecting the intellectual property of others.
if the world had known what the past decade would bring, we would have made some laws or adjusted business practices in the late 90's and early 00's - before there was a "stealing" issue in the music world the biz fat cats could have taken advantage of the world's most efficient music distribution system and made a killing with subscription and pay per download models - by making FREE and ILLEGAL the only options for as long as they have, the entertainment and news industries are now fucked.
i wanted to end that last paragraph differently - but there is no other way to say it.
i still think the survival of the magazine business (especially music mags) depends on high quality, collectible product that the fan WANTS to buy and keep forever...
I believe that it would depend on who would be reading the article or news you are trying to sell. In AP's case, I know that I, if given the choice, would go for some long term, here's $25 bucks, let me have access to the AP Archive. It would avoid the panic when I need to find January 2007 issue for that one sentence I needed for a research paper.
Maybe it could even be an extra thing for those who subscribe to the actual magazine so when we're across the country from our 3 foot high pile of AP back issues we'd be able to find what we needed (or in my case reminisce over a random quote when talking with old friends about something).
But another question is how many people, besides subscribers actually go on to the website. One of my good friends is a hardcore Blender fan and she relies on them for all of her music news, in print and online, while I prefer to use AP. I told her once, "Hey go look as this exclusive on AP" and she bypasses it for the simple fact that it wasn't from her normal source. Other friends who have bypassed AP as a whole ask what I'm doing when sitting around reading editor blogs at 8am.
But micro payments, to someone who hates iTunes for that exact reason, wouldn't appeal to me in the slightest. I prefer the mass payment approach because it allows me to pay a flat fee once a year and never have to worry about if I just messed up my entire month of banking with that $0.99 purchase right before the phone bill is due.
The one thing I wouldn't pay for, although I love them dearly, is the editor blogs. They are a nice little addition when I'm looking for something but they wouldn't always be a help to what I'm looking for. (Although, your last blog saved my ass when I needed a book source for a paper on digital downloading.)
It's kind of like how I am with your magazine. I know you have a digital copy available, but I love having the hardcopy. Being able to physically touch it, hold it, smell that fresh magazine/newsprint smell just makes it mean more to me. Plus, if I had a printed article from Yahoo! news from Obama's presidential win, in 50 years, no one will care, because you can probably still find that article somewhere on the internet (or whatever the internet becomes). If I have an actual article from a print edition of the New York times, it's a valuable piece of history.
Something about having that physical copy just allows for more of a connection if it's a subject I care about. When I hold the newspaper in my hand and read that article, it feels more real to me. Plus, even though laptops are prominent, newspapers are still a bit more portable.
However, if the world of print journalism completely died, I would pay for a news source on the web if they had proven themselves a good source, but 99 cents an article is highway robbery. I think they should look at what they'd normally charge for the paper, say $2.00, and then divide that up amongst the minimum number of articles they post every week--say 10 cents a piece if their minimum is 20 articles. If they post more than their minimum, they'll just make more money. They could also sell access to all the articles that week for that $2, which may or may not end up being a discount for the customer in addition to encouraging people to spend that whole $2 instead of just 10 cents for the big news story. Just a thought.
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