The Pay-for-Content Argument

Your article – An End, and a Beginning, for the Media – started a conversation I had with a friend about this issue, where I admitted I'm part of the problem. I value the professional media, am horrified by the loss of professional film/tv critics, but am not willing to pay for web content.

But I think Isaacson points to the reason why that is. Some sites I've frequented, including my preferred local newspaper, have experimented with subscription-based models ... and I quit visiting (until some went back to free models). Others were subscription-based when I encountered them and I had no interest in subscribing or paying the too-big fee to read one article ($5 for one article, Globe and Mail? Really?).

The beauty of the web is the ability to surf between sites, picking the items that interest me from a variety of sources. That's what the web IS to me. I don't want to commit to one website, or even several, with a subscription, unless it's really cheap. Even just for local info, I don't want to sit and read the Vancouver Sun online – I want to see what their top stories are, then what the CBC has to say, what's interesting in the Globe and Mail. (Plus, it's easy to blame the web for newspapers' woes, but I stopped subscribing to a newspaper long before newspapers started putting up their content for free. But that's a whole other post.)

However, if there were an EASY system of micropayments, I would not balk at it for articles I really wanted to see (and think of all the free time if I didn't waste it reading all the crap I'm only half-interested in!) I've already said many times that I'd pay to see certain geoblocked content. Whether that micropayment model would work, I don't know, but what's out there right now does not work, so it's at least worth a try. Whoever comes up with a business model to finance online content - without assuming people will treat the web as if it were a newspaper - will be a hero.

It's an interesting question, I had a professor back in college that theorized that there would eventually be two forms of the internet, one that was you paid for and the other that was free. We were interested in the backbone that the internet ran on (hardware), but I suppose it would also have applied to content on the net too. Even now there are different forms of the quality of free content. You can definitely tell the difference in quality from the two websites that are linked here, cnn.com and TIME.com. CNN has become mainly AP press reports or the completely useless “iReports” where TIME still mainly has their print journalist stories, either in a form that was printed or completely new article.
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Like Diane says, the problem with pay sites is that you can eventually find the same information elsewhere for free. I think that'll always be the problem of a newspaper/media that goes directly to pay-for-content. Perhaps, it'll become like cable/satellite TV, where your monthly payment goes to support such sites and block ones that aren't in agreement with your ISP, but that seems extreme and would violate net-neutrality. Hopefully it doesn't come to that.

Frankly, I believe that any media company which thinks pay-for-content is the answer is doomed. A move like that encourages piracy. Because all the content is free now, it will hard to take it away and charge for it. What they should do is charge for the extras. For example, charge a fee to be a member of Gawker or WordPress. The actual content would still be free, but membership would include being able to make and read comments, maybe have special chats with writers every once in awhile, and other things like that. An option like that would intrigue me. The media companies also need to rethink advertising. The old models are not working anymore, so get new ones. These companies need to think outside the box more if they want to survive.

This is another example of mainstream news trying to constrict and control information.

We would do better to have government subsidize bandwidth and wages for news organizations. Heck they do it for broadcasting by selling the airwaves too cheaply.

Or let the wages of publishers and pro writers fall to a reasonable level.

Most of what passes for journalism is full of info from government offices and the Republican party news machine, swilled into a porridge to put the electorate to sleep into a dream that someday they will be rich so vote right wing. This dream, as we have seen is then used by the govt to put them under war debt (monetary and humanitarian) until things finally get so bad we belatedly wake up and the only option we have is a meager choice to counter 8 years (actually 12 as Clinton's last term saw a hard swerve to the right too) of the fat cats and powerful stealing what made America good.

A writer at the LA Times revealed, when he wasn't getting paid by Sam Zell in December, that he was owed $1000 for two pieces. This writer, even sloppier than most journalists, but cute and 'snarky' does no more that put down his thoughts every few days and picks up a check. I know that real news reporters must make more, but, since so many get their news from sources planted by Republicans, government sources, etc. you really have to wonder how much are they actually worth.

A person has to read 4-5 sources just to try to get around the automatic news suppression of individual sources, on each story. And now mainstream news media wants to go back to captured audiences by charging.

Heaven knows that I cringe every time I see what the LA Times is killing trees to report on, but again that's a symptom of an audience captured by a money first organization.

Captured audiences in news helped keep minorities in their places for decades beyond what should have been the expiration date of Jim Crow and voter suppression. In the sixties and seventies we sent our sons to die and kill people in Vietnam in a draft, which even the Bush administration knew they could never get approval for in these days of free information on the Internet!

Notice that, as the web has opened up over he last decade to include everyone, we got someone in that is more reasonable and not expansionist. (We fought Germany, Japan, and the USSR over expansionism, yet started our own version in the new millenium. That's due to fat cat control of news. Now we talk to each other behind the back of controlled news, but we need do real information.)

It would be better to subsidize the news media than to charge for each read or force subscriptions for each publication, which would block news that American need to know because they can't afford to subscribe to all the news papers in the world, and they wouldn't be able to share information (I'm sure the news conglomerates will get RIAA on those who transfer their 'information').

The news media is known as the fourth branch of government. Paying for it is kinda like having to shell out a bribe to local officials. Even worse, with the poor performance of today's news media, people might just stop reading it if they have to pay.

As mentioned above, pay for content is doomed. Value added content should be looked into. My local newspapers have very active comment sections. I've suggested to them that they give priority comment placement to subscribers of the physical product. (I am not a subscriber. I hate newspapers except when it's time to color Easter eggs.) Also, the papers are morning papers but will start posting the next days articles to their website in the afternoon. Early access to those articles could be reserved for subscribers. The idea would be that as a subscriber you would receive added value, but not at the expense of the existing online offerings.

There's a whole nother thing where ISP's are like the cable companies and pay content providers to give the subscribers access to their websites.

Boom! http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/06/1444258

Permalink: http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/bell_tolls_for_time_too.htm

Time thinks it knows how to save your newspaper. But its "Modest Proposal" is delivered in a form that is remarkably modest itself – its 56 pages are barely thick enough to shim a coffee table, let alone support an entire industry.

Time may be girded in gravitas, but its physical presence lacks heft. The pot is calling the kettle black while newspapers and magazines head into the red.

Newspapers may want to fight back, but against whom? Craig Newmark, the guy who reinvented classifieds, or Al Gore, the guy who invented the Internet?

A recent commenter on Alan Mutter's superb blog said, "The problem with media companies is that they don't know how to build a successful website from scratch. Very few newspaper and local media companies have successfully established new web enterprises that weren't leveraging their local brands."

Mutter calls this failure "profound."

"The reason young people don't gravitate to newspaper websites is that most sites are more newspaper than web: staid, static and largely un-interactive. In other words, 1995-style shovelware won't cut it."

While Mutter delivers answers, Jeff Jarvis asks "What Would Google Do?" Based on Jarvis' book, it's safe to assume that Google would not deploy the kind of lackluster sites that Jarvis directed for Newhouse's newspapers until 2005, where he was president and creative director. Ultimately, it's these people who are responsible for the failure of newspapers to monetize online, which ultimately is driving the downfall of newspapers.

Here's something else Google wouldn't do: create new sites mired in old thinking. Globalpost, minnpost, voiceofsandiego and stlbeacon will fail because they merely replicate the content and revenue strategies that haven't worked for newspapers. None of these can generate the cash they need to be sustainable. That's why they depend upon handouts.

But in the coming days, in major markets across the USA, you will see the kind of websites that Mutter's commenter described. They're based on newspaper editorial and advertising content, but unlike newspaper sites, they leverage the extraordinary capabilities of the online world with revenue models at their core.

Sites like realpeoplerealstuff, videojobshop and tweentribune represent the new breed of news and advertising sites. These sites embody the new fundamentals: niche, youth, usability, UGC, geo- and demographically targeted advertising, stickiness, video, automation, mobile, distributive editing and fun.

These sites are coming to your town - with or without the local newspaper's imprimatur. But they're coming.

Subscription content will only survive if it is sufficiently unique and valuable that many people will pay for it. That will be a handfull of options. Right now I subscribe to three websites, The Wall Street Journal, Wine Spectator and Robert Parker. Each have distinctive content. I do not think any can survive based on online subscription businesses, but it works for me for now. The interesting thing is that the two wine sites have been the most aggressive about leveraging their key assets (databases of tasting notes going way back in time) to drive revenue. That is what I pay for, and then I read the stories and news as a drive by. I would not pay for the stories, but the tasting notes are invaluable.

I think that a couple of posters have the right answer, old media tried the shovelware approach to building web presence without any effort to identify truly unique content. That stopped working a long time ago. Now you have to do something to build innovative sticky web experiences that present stronger advertising platforms. Some will succeed. Right now I think that Time is moving in the right direction. Tuned In, The Page, Swampland are all blogs I track. It is unique content but it is not afraid of the web. I think the Atlantic is rolling in the right direction as well. It will be interesting to see who wins out over time.

Most of the comments above are incomprehensible. Some points are well made, but deeply hidden in some great mess of competitive incoherency. Maybe all the contributors read and copy the same stuff?

Or maybe the posts are edited to death!

The point is: publishers can't sell subscriptions to content unless it has extra benefits for the reader. For example: does someone know what extra revenue Time Warner was getting for their new venture? The multi pack subscription offer, where the subscriber can receive various titles over the year instead of just one?

That's pioneering work that can point the way to increasing revenue!

Answers on a postcard please !

I don't claim to have the answer as to what formula will work in the post-newspaper era, but my colleagues and I have published NashvillePost.com as a subscription web service since 2000, covering local business and politics in a depth never achieved by our local competition.

My predecessors and I have had three, four, sometimes five reporters covering the entirety of local news in our chosen fields -- up against dozens at the Gannett daily. We have beaten it so badly and so consistently that it no longer bothers to hide its use of us as a de facto wire service, and so we often lead the news cycle in Nashville.

We have had a patient venture capitalist and a loyal base of $100+/yr subscribers over the past decade. Nothing has been easy, and we are as concerned about the current environment as all our brethren at the Gannett paper and elsewhere. But I feel I ought to mention our example by way of showing what can be accomplished through the supposedly outdated mode of subscriptions.

Regards,
Tom Wood

Tom - NashvillePost.com is impressive. The Arkansan Democrat Gazette takes the same approach - you have to buy to get the news. But their pricing is a lot lower than yours: $59 a year!

I know they are in profit and doing well, and their printed newspaper always sells out outside the stores etc.

Peter

[...] The Readers To Pay For Articles Posted on February 28, 2009 by Rags Srinivasan The Pay-for-content argument should not be an argument at all. When material goods are not available for free, why should [...]

[...] 谁来做新闻业的iTunes？ 互联网时代新闻业的前途早已不是一个新鲜话题，但是在眼下的经济环境里，各种矛盾尖锐地爆发在一起。去年年底，美国第二大报业集团，《洛杉矶时报》的东家论坛公司申请破产。2月27日，美国科罗拉多州的《落基山新闻报》结束了其150周年的历史。3月17日，146年历史的《西雅图邮报》宣布停止发行纸质报纸，成为美国首家只发行网络版的大报。正如CNN前董事长，时代周刊前任主编Walter Isaacson总结的那样：传统的报刊有三个盈利来源：零售、订阅和广告。随着网络时代的来临，三条腿里只有最后一条还算健康。现在经济衰退到来了，于是最后一条腿也没了。在这个风雨飘摇的关头，争吵也前所未有的尖锐起来。在上周四，华盛顿邮报的幕后老板，新闻集团董事长默多克指责Google窃取了报纸的权益，呼吁各大媒体联手反击，华尔街日报总编和美联社主席旋即表达支持，甚至使用了“寄生虫（parasite）”这样的攻击性字眼。而在本周正在召开的美国报业协会大会上，Google CEO施密特则教训报业的从业者们，尽快找到适应时代的盈利模式。在过去的几天里，从纽约时报到华盛顿邮报到时代周刊，统统卷入了这一场口水战之中。可是这一切和Apple4.us有什么关系呢？这是因为在各种关于报业在网络时代盈利可能性的讨论中，苹果和iTunes的经验被一再提及，这就是所谓的“微付费（micro-payment）”模式。人们对Napster时代唱片业奄奄一息的状态记忆犹新，也不会忘记iTunes的横空出世是怎样改变了这一切。这一模式的关键之处在于，允许用户为少量内容零散付费。——许多报刊都曾经尝试过网络付费订阅模式，但是多半归于失败，原因在于用户几乎不可能在网上浏览时因为偶然点开了一篇需要付费才能看到的文章而去订阅一个月甚至一年的报纸或者杂志。相较而言，如果有一种简单可靠的付费方式允许用户花上几美分就能够购买这一篇文章的阅览——就像在iTunes里花上一块钱左右买一首单曲一样——则用户的积极性就会大得多。无论是纽约时报执行主编Bill Keller，时代周刊前主编Walter Isaacson，还是Google CEO施密特，近期都在纷纷鼓吹学习苹果这一商业模式的可行性。同iTunes一同被作为榜样加以研究的还有Kindle——作为图书业的拯救者。默多克甚至还声称新闻集团正在考虑向Kindle出售内容，而纽约时报事实上已经开始这样做了。（如果是我，还会建议另一个榜样：盛大旗下的起点中文网。尽管不能同iTunes相比，但是起点网络小说的风生水起证明了即使在人们普遍不愿为网络电子内容付费的中国，微付费模式也仍然大有可为。）但是对报刊业来说，时间所剩无几，而盈利模式的转型却又困难重重。一方面，台面上的网络阅读付费系统鲜有成功的例子，失败的先驱倒是有一大堆。时代周刊的文章里列举了一大堆付费系统的名字： Flooz， Beenz， CyberCash， Bitpass， Peppercoin以及DigiCash，然后不无讽刺地说：“如果你还记得这些公司，说明你一定在它们身上赔过钱。”另一方面，网络的特点是一家网站上一篇收费的文章如果真的重要，就一定能在另一家网站上免费地看到。收费除了损失流量之外似乎什么用处也没有。有鉴于此，Gawker的专栏作家Hamilton Nolan呼吁，所有的报刊媒体应当一同行动起来，只有大家一起开始收费才能够防止因为第一个吃螃蟹而招致的失败命运。作为读者也许不愿意看到这一天，——在时代周刊发起的讨论页里，评论者一面倒地反对付费阅读。但是大局如此，花五分钱才能看到当天的纽约时报头版文章的时代很可能很快就要到来了。这是好事还是坏事，也许取决于你从什么角度看待它。会不会有人乘势而起，像苹果推出iTunes一样抓住报业转型的的机遇呢？目前为止还没有答案。 [...]

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[...] per article or maybe $2 per month to access online content, is one option. But if the comments on another Time article are indicative of the online consensus, that ain’t gonna fly. It’d be interesting if [...]

It never ceases to amaze me that people think they should have online news for free. You need toothpaste, but invariably someone has to make it, and they have to be paid.

Articles and news is a commodity. People write them, therefore they need to be paid.