The Fate of The Free Newspaper

jm92956n writes "We've all become accustomed to the wide availability of newspapers and other media online, almost all of which is available for free. Today, however, The New York Times (free registration required; how ironic!) is running an article that questions the long term viability of that business model. Interestingly, the Times now has more online readers than print readers. Is the era of free news content about to end?"

Comments

Payment is the problem

[lucifuge31337]

But when it comes to online news, they are happy to read it but loath to pay for it.

1). We're already used to it being free
2.) The payment barrier still sucks, i.e.: No valid micropayment system exists (STILL) and people who read their news ont he web generally don't want a subscription to every resource they use. If there were a reasonable micropayment system in place, where content poroviders could charge you a few cents to read an article or access certian content, without hassle to the end-user, this type of thing could work.

How do you get a critical mass using a micropayment system? I'm not touching that one. If I had an answer, I'd already be at 5.) Profit!

Re:Payment is the problem

[Deep Fried Geekboy]

Absolutely right. Micropayments is it. Not just the solution to free news but a plethora of other problems as well, probably including -- at least to a first approximation -- spam.

You know what worries me? The answer to micropayments will be PayPal. That's scary. But probably what will happen. We're certainly there for mini-payments right now ($2-$5 stuff).

Re:Payment is the problem

[91degrees]

The payment barrier still sucks, i.e.: No valid micropayment system exists (STILL)

I don't think people like micropayments. Flat rate for a lot of stuff would appeal to a lot of people a whole lot more.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Making you beleive that they rely on price you pay for a newspaper is a gimmick.

They make money from the ads inside and they charge more for adds by the amount of reader they have.

Same thing for magazine, 3/4 of a magazione are advertisement and they still charge you for it.

It's people's mentality to beleive that a newspaper that is free is not good and can't have good article, they rather read a newpaper that you pay for.

Re:Payment is the problem

[LocoMan]

Maybe there should be some way where it can be handled by the ISP like it's done with phone companies these days. There are lots of services in the phone (and even more in cell phones) that I don't really have to subscribe to, but there's a rate for using it, which is reflected on my bill.

Maybe we need some kind of micropayment standard, where people could pay a small amount if they only want to read a single article on a subscrption only website, and then the payment comes with your ISP fees and the ISP pays whoever you're paying to.

There would need to be some huge protections around this, though... so it's not abused by shady "click OK if you want to pay us 10,000 dollars" kind of websites.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

NYT makes money off ads. They are just moaning about this because their execs see a vast untapped source of more money (online subscribers) and want to make it seem like they just have to switch to a paid model. But it isn't about necessity; it's about money.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Dr. Evil]

Google could solve this with a snap of its fingers. They're already searching online papers, they just need to devise a way to bill people for reading paid content and distribute payments to the papers. Subscription or pay-as-you-go online credits might work.

Re:Payment is the problem

[DenDave]

Apart from the whole information wants to be free issue... I think that many prefer to pay for the paper and not for the electrons. Myself included, I dislike the idea of paying for a website access for a variety of reasons. One of them is that if you cancel, you get spammed. Another is that online registrations are invasive, you don't need to know my date of birth, really you don't. Furthermore, I buy my paper at the newsstand, it's fun, I like it. I am happy to throw some coins at the fat guy in the greasy shirt who runs the stand. In the long run I suppose we will all end up autmagically paying per-view but when that day arives, I think I may buy a printing press on ebay for dirt cheap and start up a newspaper.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Tim C]

Indeed. I don't want to have to think "If I click this link, it'll cost me $smallAmount, which will add up to - hell, how much this month so far? $largerAmount or $evenLargerAmount?"

If it's something I use regularly, I'd rather pay a subscription. If it's something I just browse now and then, a micropayment model would be fine.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

No, micropayments seem like they could suck. For something like a newspaper, you'd probably want a content aggregator, and let them take care of the micropayments. Something like, 'X dollars for Y sites', that kind of thing. To the consumer, they'd be paying a flatrate, but they get to choose from a number of periodicals of their choice.

Re:Payment is the problem

[mirko]

Some newspaper actually let you access all of their online articles using a code they send you when you subscribe to their paper edition. I think this is the most interesting way to develop this : it helps the paper edition to survive while adding value to the subscription.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

There will never be a large market for paid content on the web. The web is not like TV or even radio; the entry cost into the game is much lower so if NYT and all of the big papers start to charge for their content, then a cheaper advertiser paid market will open up flourish and dominate because a news site is cheap enough to run on ad only revenue.

Re:Payment is the problem

[dsginter]

How do you get a critical mass using a micropayment system?

Easy, if you're Microsoft.

1) Release $5 or $10 worth of bundled micropayments with Longhorn.
2) Siphon a percentage of the transactions.
3) People see value in micropayment driven content and find themselves renewing with their own dime.
4) Profit!

Unfortunately, Microsoft is playing the role of the evil monopoly that can do nothing right. So we'll have to wait until some bright spark does it first and then gets aquired by Microsoft.

You'd think that, with an R&D budget in the billions, we'd have this from Microsoft by now. Is there some sort of rule that prevents large companies from coming up with something innovative on their own?

Re:Payment is the problem

[SunPin]

It kills trees.

Re:Payment is the problem

[justforaday]

Flat rate for a lot of stuff would appeal to a lot of people a whole lot more.

This would be possible if only one or two media companies owned everything. Too bad things aren't going that direction...

Re:Payment is the problem

[cerebis]

I'm not sure that micropayments have ever truly been tested for that claim to be substantiated.

The parent poster was possibly not explicit enough.

The most effective use of the totality of the Internet's resources is obtained by wide and deep but selective examination. Resources which aggregate information, but charge whole fees for access to any part of itself, run against that approach in, at least, that it would cost a great deal to have access any sizeable percentage of the Internet's total resources.

In particular, since news is not intrinsically owned by any one group it is problably unlikely that any turnstile can be effectively placed in front of it as a whole.

Micropayments fit.

The denial of deep links is a related issue

Re:Payment is the problem

[v_1matst]

which are grown explicitly for that purpose... the recycling of paper consumes more resources than it saves...

Re:Payment is the problem

[daviddennis]

If my memory serves, the newsstand price of a paper goes about half into the pocket of the newsstand owner, and the other half barely pays for paper and printing costs.

It's advertising, then, that carries the cost of the paper. I think the real problem is that online advertising is a lot cheaper than print. Certainly print ads are a lot bigger than their online cousins, and are way better at conveying a message.

Since a lot of people are willing to buy the paper to (say) get grocery coupons and find out what the car dealerships are up to, it seems to me that adding those advertising sections to the online paper might really help revenues.

D

Re:Payment is the problem

[91degrees]

Don't see why. Surely the resources used are going to be pretty much the same regardless of raw materials, whether its wood, rags, or used paper.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Freexe]

You've been watching to much shit tv

Re:Payment is the problem

[bitingduck]

Some papers already have the newspaper ads in them, they just aren't as obvious as the ones that go tumbling and flying out of the paper version.

The LA times has a link in the sidebar on the left where you can view the actual newspaper ads, and they're sorted by category. I can't always guess which category a store will fall into, but they do have the full ads, so if I want to see the Fry's ad or the Big 5 ad, it's easy enough. They just need to make it more obvious and easier to do on impulse without being annoying.

Re:Payment is the problem

[TheViffer]

It kills trees.
It has been many years since any newspapers were made from "trees". It costs way to much to much produce.

Newspapers of today are made from herbaceous plants.

Re:Payment is the problem

[anagama]

I love my computers. That's why I buy the paper version newspapers. When I'm sitting at the lunch counter reading a paper I invested a whole 50 cents in buying, I don't get upset when I spill ketchup, soup, or coke all over it.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Winkhorst]

I might consider paying for an "all you can eat" system that gave me access to vast quantities of premium content, but I am NOT going to be nickeled and dimed to death with "micropayments" to every Tom Dick and Harry who thinks his useless two cents worth should be billed to the reader at that rate. When's the last time you actually read some "news" online that required anything other than the most superficial fact gathering? Half these idiots can't get the easy facts right, let along getting to the bottom of a complex story. And the day Google starts routing me to pay-per-view pages without clearly notifying me in advance is the day I find another search engine. Some of you folks need to go back and reread the Cluetrain Manifesto.

Re:Payment is the problem

[drinkypoo]

Why not just charge micropayments up to the cost of the "cover price" and then let people read the rest of the content for free?

Re:Payment is the problem

[Columcille]

Interesting idea, but I don't see this ever working, at least not with the current structure of the net. Unless the user had to provide the information to the website, there would be no real way of knowing who to bill. Current phone systems make it pretty simple for a number to know where to send the bill and who is being billed. The internet provides no such ease, as user data is generally not available. About the most a website can hope for is the user's IP address and even that can't be validated with any degree of reliability. As well, this wouldn't do anything for those users who access sites from a coffee shop, airport terminal, college dorm room, the workplace, etc. Generally if a person calls a phone service that charges their account, they do it from home. Such services are not accessible from other phone. Blocking computer users not tied to some sort of paid ISP would be suicide to a company since that is a lot of users. Thinking of something myself, I'm not sure why iTunes' method wouldn't work. Music purchased through iTunes is not immediately charged to your account. My observation has been that about once a day they charge your account for all music purchased that day, rather than doing several smaller charges. Sites doing this would still require you sign up and provide billing information, but rather than doing a credit on every download they credit the account once a week or something like that.

Re:Payment is the problem

[serutan]

We already have the input side of a valid micropayment system. It's called taxation. News and other content could be a public service with private providers, if some bright business people would get over the "socialism" barrier and put some time into figuring out the mechanics of getting the right amount of money to the providers, instead of the spending all their time on the mechanics of withholding the content from non-payers.

Re:Payment is the problem

[R.Caley]

It kills trees.

Which is a Good Thing, so long as you don't throw the newspapers away.

Carbon sequestration.

So, the moral is to buy paper publications and a huge shed to keep them in:-).

More seriously, I wonder if anyone has done an environmental impact study comparing recycling with storage, taking into account the carbon removed from the atmosphere. Perhaps it would be a win to keep growing plants to make paper which we use once and then pule up somewhere where it won't rot.

Come to think of it, I remember reding about use of straw as a house building material. Perhaps bales of used newsprint could be used for that. Since the whole point is to do it in a way that prevents it from degrading, it should be a perfect form of sequestration with the resulting buildings being energy efficiant too (since they would be well insulated).

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno, I just tried to read an article today and would have gladly paid to read it; but the only way to get the content was to pay $50 for a year subscription... no thanks....

Re:Payment is the problem

[MBGMorden]

I agree, but I also agree w/ the grand parent in that the micropayment model just isn't viable. For the most part people reject metered usage of anything. Think about it: "free nights and weekends" packages are extremely popular on cell phone plans, as are the call all you want plans (like Verizon's "In" plan). Internet access never really took off until we got unlimited access instead of x number of hours per month. Most people I know are far more likely to take a longer route somewhere than to hit a toll road. Divx discs were a horrible failure compared to watch-all-you want DVD discs.

The basic fact of it is, people hate watching the clock. If I pay $20 per month for content, then I can budget for that. I know that I can't get an oops moment and run the bill up, I know that I'm not going to be surprised at the end of the month. I myself subscribe to a few content related websites (ign.com, gamewallpapers.com, etc), but only on a yearly, non-renewing basis.

You must also consider the fact that many of the people online these days aren't techies. They can't fathom why they'd have to pay extra money beyond their ISP fees to access content. I know a LOT of people who complain that $10/month dial-up access is too expensive (their jaws drop when they find out I pay $50/month for DSL). These people aren't going to pay per article.

I don't know if they could make a flat-rate for content system work, but I can tell you now that micropayments will never work, and it's not gonna be b/c of implementation issues.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The NYT online edition has plenty of advertising, just like the dead-tree version.

Re:Payment is the problem

[forrestt]

Actually, there isn't a problem. Some bean counters at the newspaper are looking at their books and seeing an increase in the amount of people reading their newspaper online, and a reduction in the amount of "paper" sales. The newspapers don't make as much money from online ads and are saying the sky is falling. These are "old school" newspaper folk who don't realize that what they are selling on the street isn't the news, it is the medium it is being deliverd on. They are too short sighted to realize that as more people read the news online, the prices of ad-space will increase. I cannot believe that the $.50 a paper costs (less if you have a subscription) is in any way paying for more than the paper, ink, and delivery costs associated with bringing a paper to the reader. The costs almost entirely disappear with online papers (yes, I know the bandwith and server charges are there, but those are really nothing in comparison to the amount of money a newspaper spends on paper and ink). The real money a newspaper makes is in selling ads. Currently online advertisements aren't as profitable. But that is because industry isn't used to this type of advertisement, and isn't sure it is worth spending money on. So, the newspapers are selling online ad space for less money. But as online ads catch on, companies will feel more comfortable with them, and they will be just as profitable as "traditional" ad space.

Re:Payment is the problem

[lucifuge31337]

For something like a newspaper, you'd probably want a content aggregator

For nothing more than reading when you go to the site...sure. How about linked content in public/semipublic forums, etc? Which aggregator do you link to?

Re:Payment is the problem

[RetroGeek]

Cost of gathering the newspapers at the curb, transporting to the sorting facility, sorting, storage, then extra processing to remove old ink.

Most of it goes to making toilet paper.....

Re:Payment is the problem

[R.Caley]

Some newspaper actually let you access all of their online articles using a code they send you when you subscribe to their paper edition.

Quite common for magazines. I think most newspapers don't assume their content has enough medium-term value to make the free online access a significant draw, so it's not worth using access to it to try and increase paper circulation, rather they use the online presence as advertising.

One interesting case is the BBC funded by UK TV licence payers. They have no real motivation for providing the free online news service, beyond the fact that they need to be seen to be providing services, and there is no reason to try and restrict it to UK readers even if there was a sensible way to do so. As a licence payer, I find it somewhat weird that I pay a TV licence fee yet watch almost no BBC TV, but more than get my money's worth from the internet and radio services.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Registered Coward v2]

2.) The payment barrier still sucks, i.e.: No valid micropayment system exists (STILL) and people who read their news ont he web generally don't want a subscription to every resource they use. If there were a reasonable micropayment system in place, where content poroviders could charge you a few cents to read an article or access certian content, without hassle to the end-user, this type of thing could work.


Actually, there are solutions such as Lexus / Nexus and Dow Jones that aggregate content from multiple sources. While they are expensives, perhaps if tehy offered a small subset of popular media at a fixed monthly fee you could get access to a wide range of publications, plus they could pay the publications a fee based on on line usage. The problem is that online sources want to capture readers so the get the entire revenue stream (ads plus subscription).

DJ is ad-free (beacuse it is a paid service) - would people be willing to pay less if content included ads? That's the paper model applied online.

Re:Payment is the problem

[91degrees]

Cost of gathering the newspapers at the curb, transporting to the sorting facility

No different from cost of collecting it from the forest, and not even substantially higher than exisitng waste collection cost.

sorting

Most is already sorted. Corporate recycling is mostly photocopier paper, household is mostly newspaper

storage

Requires considerably less space than dedicated forests. And takes up lkess ladnfill space,

then extra processing to remove old ink.

Can be achieved by bleaching. Most paper is bleached whatever the source.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Wordsmith]

That is SUCH a remarkably bad idea. It puts the government in a position to decide what is or isn't worthwhile or legitimate news, and to fund it with the taxes appropriately.

In addition: Maybe I, as a taxpayer, don't want my nickel going to the liberal/conservative/communist/libertarian rag on the corner, and I only want to financially support the local whack-job-environmentalist newsletter. Why should I be forced to subsidize the others?

Re:Payment is the problem

[iamacat]

Uh.. DVD rentals are far more popular than DVD sales. iTunes music store rules over subscription-based Napster. In fact, most things in life are "pay as you go". Cellphone companies and AOL just have unreasonable rates. $1/day for internet access would work better for many casual users than $10/month.

Re:Payment is the problem

[R.Caley]

No different from cost of collecting it from the forest

But they don't collect from forrests, but from plantations. In a plantation it comes in huge lumps carefully arranged in neat lines for easy collection. No picking up small amounts from each of a million suppliers.

Most paper is bleached whatever the source.

But trees aren't treated with dyes specially designed to be hard to remove. It's much easier to get rid of a slight yellowish tinge in fresh wood pulp than to get rid of colour-fast inks.

I believe the biggest problem is that once you've used the stuff once, the fibers are mashed and broken, so turning it back into pulp, giving it a heavy chemical treatment and then into paper results in poor quality paper. The best use, other than bog-roll, is to mix it with new wood pulp to make it go further.

Re:Payment is the problem

[duffbeer703]

That is such an incredibly bad idea, I'm not sure where to start.

Do you really want the US Congress deciding what you can and cannot read?

If you do, you are the must incredibly naive person I have ever encountered... want to buy a bridge with a great view of Brooklyn?

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, and their Passport technology (that would enable and usher in such an age of Microsoft-powered micropayments) - which they have spent billions on - is working great for them..

Every major player fights to use it! Ok, except for eBay!

Re:Payment is the problem

[MBGMorden]

$1/day for internet access would work better for many casual users than $10/month. But you don't see people flocking to that method do you? No, because it's metered. DVD sales versus rentals isn't a valid comparison, because they're BOTH metered. Compare the number of people who pay for premium cable channels (HBO, Cinemax, etc) versus people who use PPV. People that I know are far more likely to subscribe to the premium channels that to buy a movie off of PPV. To extend that further, I'd be willing to bet that people would be far quicker to pay $25 per month for flat-rate video on demand rather than pay as you go PPV, even if the average PPV bill would only come out to $15 per month. They simply don't have to justify a purchases EVERY time they want to watch a movie.

As to iTunes versus Napster, I'd argue that that is much more a result of marketing than functionality. If iTunes themselves had a subscription listen service versus their own pay service I'd wager than the subscription revenue would far outstrip the pay-per-song side.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Flat rate for a lot of stuff would appeal to a lot of people a whole lot more.

We're already paying a flat rate to our ISP.

Re:Payment is the problem

[RealAlaskan]

>>Flat rate for a lot of stuff would appeal to a lot of people a whole lot more.

>This would be possible if only one or two media companies owned everything.

It would also be possible if the independent media companies syndicated their content with a few on-line aggregators, who could then retail it for a small, flat rate.

>Too bad things aren't going that direction...

Aren't they? Or was that sarcasm?

Re:Payment is the problem

[91degrees]

No picking up small amounts from each of a million suppliers.

Where I live, the rubbish collection also collects recyclables. They're going that way and collecting the stuff anyway. The extra weight of the recycling containers and the time with the engine running while the stuff is sorted adds costs but these are quite small.

But trees aren't treated with dyes specially designed to be hard to remove. It's much easier to get rid of a slight yellowish tinge in fresh wood pulp than to get rid of colour-fast inks.

The pro-recycling lobby claims that the environmental harm from this is lower than from processing raw materials. Don't know if this is true though. I'd quite like to see what processes are involved though.

I believe the biggest problem is that once you've used the stuff once, the fibers are mashed and broken, so turning it back into pulp, giving it a heavy chemical treatment and then into paper results in poor quality paper. The best use, other than bog-roll, is to mix it with new wood pulp to make it go further.

Well, that's true, but there's no reason not to use partially recycled paper. You'll need some fresh aterial anyway. Collection is not going to be anywhere near 100%.

Re:Payment is the problem

[iamacat]

Where can I get Internet access for $1 per day? I would certainly be a heavy user during ski season. No cable modem in hotels, you know. I also don't have cable, but would pay for PPV if I didn't have to subscribe to cable first and they had stuff I liked to watch.

I'd wager than the subscription revenue would far outstrip the pay-per-song side.

Improving their revenue is not exactly what I hope for when choosing a payment model.

Re:Payment is the problem

[BroadwayBlue]

Something missing from this article is a comment on the major revenue source of the Classifieds. I was under the impression that newspapers historcially had made a lot of money from this, and the internet has altered that market.

For me, quality of the news matter. I need more than just facts. An article in BW (online link at The Future Of The New York Times ) two months ago discussed this same topic. That article included a different angle in that the NYT continues to do investigative work whereas a lot of other papers have chosen to cut back.

Re:Payment is the problem

[elhondo]

offtopic, but http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/170-1113200 2-137.html

Re:Payment is the problem

[Hans Lehmann]

I don't think people like micropayments.

They do when it's convenient. Look at the corner newstand. If I feel like reading today's paper, I drop a few coins on the counter and walk way with a copy. I'm not obliged to answer any questions, sign an EULA, or subscribe for the next 30 days.
If it were only so simple to give $.05 to the New York Times in exchange for a copy of a single article, people would do it.
Ultimately, people want to pay using whatever method requires the least amount of work on their part.

Re:Payment is the problem

[MBGMorden]

A bit off topic, but some broadband providers feature "roaming dialup" accounts. If I'm away from my home machine then all I need to do is take a list of access numbers with me and dial in as needed. It doesn't cost me anything extra over my standard DSL bill.

As to the question of revenue; I don't think that increasing the company's revenue is every a specific concern of the customer, but the bottom line is that in a captitalist society, the method bringing in the most revenue is usually the preferred means of access to a partcular good or service.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Knight2K]

I think another issue is: people already pay a lot of money for fast internet access. At least in the U.S., you pay anywhere from $30 to $50 monthly, depending on what services are available in the area.

Most people, after paying that amount of money, probably feel entitled to have a certain level of access to information. When you pay for a cable subscription, you get a bunch of channels as part of the deal. You then pay more for premium content without the ads. That seems to be the business model right now on the Internet: most ad-supported, the rest pay content.

If the majority of the internet switched to micro-payments, the situation would be reversed: most content would be 'premium' with a small majority free. That would be like paying a monthly fee for cable and then paying again for each channel, including local stuff you could have gotten with rabbit ears. I think most people would not like to be billed twice.

In a way, I think media companies and corporations are hurting themselves here. Let municipalities provide low-cost access to the Internet; that just frees capital to pay for really good services like video-on-demand or quality newspaper content.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Bitchslap_69]

The Los Angeles Times has a similar model, where daily print subscribers get free access to the Calendar Live section of their Web site, which includes, e.g., club and theater listings, restaurant reviews, and so on. To create your on-line account, you have to provide your print subscription account number.

Re:Payment is the problem

[plague3106]

I think what you're over looking is that the papers are selling online ads for less, because its pretty widely known that people can block online ads altogether.

In print you'll notice the ad out of the corner of your eye even if you don't specifically look at it...online there's just a hole were the ad was..you can't look even if you wanted because you've opted to block all ads.

Re:Payment is the problem

[plague3106]

However it will likely take off.

Seventy percent of US HS students believe that the news media SHOULD get gov't appproval before being allowed to publish their story.

Re:Payment is the problem

[nelsonal]

Trees grown for paper are grown on farms for that purpose (they are rapid growing hybrids (poplars and willows) that are basically cellulose factories. The concept of recycling them is almost as strange as the concept of recycling pineapple or corn. The natural cellulose factory is much more efficient than the man-made ink stripping factory.

Re:Payment is the problem

[forrestt]

I'm not overlooking it. Yes, people CAN block online ads, but do they. Microsoft surely isn't going to want this, so they will probably put in things to prevent IE from showing pages with blocked ads (possibly at a kernel level to other browsers won't be able to either). As more and more less technical savy individuals get online, more and more ads will be seen. Also, if the ads aren't intrusive they won't get blocked as much. People block ads because they are anoying, not because they have any desire to get something for nothing. My point was (and maybe I didn't make it clearly), the online advertising industry is still in its infancy. As it matures, and the advertisers figure out what works and what doesn't, they will be able to charge more. At this point in time (and I would say for the next 5-10 years) it is too early to say that the news industry is going to die.

Re:Payment is the problem

[drank]

Congratulations on writing the worst suggestion ever to receive a "+3 Insightful" moderation.

When I make micropayments, just as when I pay subscriptions, I want the money to go to content providers that I personally choose to read and support.

I have no interest whatsoever in paying some generic "content licensing fee" and having it divvy'd up to the cronies of political office holders.

And given how jealously journalists of all flavors guard their first amendment rights, I can't imaging that many would want to sign up for such a system of government control. Any content provider that would sign up is, almost certainly, one that I'd have no interest in reading!

Re:Payment is the problem

[Clod9]

On a serious note, couldn't there be voluntary membership in a ratings organization rather than just a few oligopolists? The scheme I've been trying to cook up is one where the readers would all pay a set rate, contributing to a pool; then the pool would be split among the content providers according to how often their content was accessed, as measured by some trusted mechanism. That trusted rating system is what I don't know how to solve, but I still believe it's possible to construct.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Pfhorrest]

1). We're already used to it being free
2.) The payment barrier still sucks [...]
5.) Profit!

Three, sir!

Re:Payment is the problem

[timeOday]

Forget billing and authentication! All that hassle is the problem, and it's not worth it for a few cents. I'm sick of giving out an email address just to spend money.

What we need is online cash. It must be as universal as the US dollar. From a technical standpoint it's not that hard to do, if you accept a single clearing house. The last thing we need is another PayPal. I nominate the US treasury.

Re:Payment is the problem

[knight37]

Umm, Microsoft already has added a feature to allow people to block certain types of ads in their latest IE version.

IMHO, Web advertisers killed themselves. It wasn't enough to have little banners at the tops of pages. No, they had to be BLINKING ads. They had to be "false window" ads to make users think they got some kind of message from their OS. They had to be ANIMATED! 5 MILLION TECHNICOLOR QUADROPHONIC BLASTING IN YOUR FACE ADS!!!

So now, as a result, we block their stupid ass ads. Now we don't even see the ads that we once might have actually clicked on, because dumbasses thought it was better to try and annoy us rather than let us decide what to pay attention to and what not to.

Re:Payment is the problem

[plague3106]

Out of curiousity, why do you think MS cares if we see online ads or not? They don't seem to benefit either way..

As the poster below pointed out, the online ad industry probably will die out. They annoyed people to the point that they actively remove ads they simply ignored before. Somehow I doubt that their attempts to get around the technological blocks users put into place will put online advertising back into a positive spotlight; more likely it will further infuriate users who will then use another means to block ads.

Or perhaps online advertisers are now running into legal problems; if they are taking advantage of security exploits to get around popup blocking, there could be legal ramifications for them.

Both are likely, so to me the future of online advertising doesn't look bright.

Re:Payment is the problem

[forrestt]

Out of curiousity, why do you think MS cares if we see online ads or not?

Because other corporations would try to persuade them (ie Time Warner, Wal Mart, etc) to make it so their advertisments aren't blocked, the same way the recording industry has tried to persuade them to install DRM. That is my reasoning. It might be flawed, but I wasn't trying to make a dig on Microsoft. They are just another company who, like all companies, is looking out to maximize profits, and as long as they obey the law, more power to them. But revenue from advertisments makes Microsofts income look like mine in comparison to Microsoft's. That is a lot of pressure for Microsoft to ignore.

The rest of your post goes along with what I was saying. The online advertisement industry is in its infancy. It has to learn what works, and what doesn't. The main thing I think they have learned in the past 10 years is that online ads can't be anoying.

Re:Payment is the problem

[gad_zuki!]

> No valid micropayment system exists (STILL)

And for a good reason. I'd rather not drop 20+ dollars into a micropayment scheme a month and be charged a nickel or a dime per link only to find out I'm outta cash by the 10th. Not to mention, if micros got off, the banner ads and text ads would still be there.

Commercial entities can do fine with just ads and donate buttons seem to work great for everyone else. The "nickel a click" web is not the web you want.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Speare]

Hah! You're expecting a corporation to charge a little, charge a little, charge a little, and then STOP?! That's like expecting a toll highway to dismantle the toll booths "once the highway has been paid for."

Re:Payment is the problem

[godzilla808]

If I'm viewing ads, then I *am* paying for news.

Re:Payment is the problem

[zCyl]

Another is that online registrations are invasive, you don't need to know my date of birth, really you don't.

I wonder what they think they're using all that accumulated birthday/birthyear information for anyway? I make up a different number for every registration I sign up for.

Re:Payment is the problem

[ruzel]

I don't understand why the US treasury could not issue standardized plastic cards along the lines of pre-paid phone cards. They have a number. They have a $ amount (5,20,50). It works exactly like a debit card (maybe even using the same network) but the withdrawl comes out of the Treasury's pocket. You pay $5 in cash for a $5 debit card. It's not a smartcard -- the money's not on it, it's wherever the data is. It's anonymous to boot. Is there something I'm missing with a solution like this? The porn industry does it.

Re:Payment is the problem

[drinkypoo]

If it brings in customers that otherwise would not use the service, and thus makes them more money, I think they will do it. After all, money is what drives the decisions...

Re:Payment is the problem

[Paua Fritter]

In addition: Maybe I, as a taxpayer, don't want my nickel going to the liberal/conservative/communist/libertarian rag on the corner, and I only want to financially support the local whack-job-environmentalist newsletter. Why should I be forced to subsidize the others?

See, there's this cool technology called "voting" ...

If we all paid a "news tax" we could still vote to direct shares of our tax to the news providers we preferred. If you don't like liberal conservative communist libertarians you could direct your money somewhere else. The difference from a retail market is just that you couldn't choose not to pay.

So you can still have choice. I pay taxes that pay for the public health system in this country, but I still get to choose what doctor I go to.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I click this link, it'll cost me $smallAmount, which will add up to - hell, how much this month so far? $largerAmount or $evenLargerAmount?"

Dude, you sound like a perl programmer!

Re:Payment is the problem

[RedBear]

They are too short sighted to realize that as more people read the news online, the prices of ad-space will increase.

The real money a newspaper makes is in selling ads. Currently online advertisements aren't as profitable. But that is because industry isn't used to this type of advertisement, and isn't sure it is worth spending money on. So, the newspapers are selling online ad space for less money. But as online ads catch on, companies will feel more comfortable with them, and they will be just as profitable as "traditional" ad space.

Do you really believe that? Online ads have been going nowhere but down in value for years now. They don't work. Rest assured that industry is quite sure what online advertisements are worth to them after a decade of experience with a commercial Internet. They've run the numbers, and the numbers show them that they don't get enough return from investing in online ads to justify paying more than a pittance for them on 99.9999% of the websites on the Internet.

At this point I can remove the vast majority of them from my online experience with the click of a button. That technical problem alone reduces their value tremendously, even on the most popular websites on the net, and the blocking technologies will only get better and more widespread. I can't wave a magic wand over my printed media and make all the ads disappear.

I don't think ad-supported online media is going to work out very well. They will have to find some other way to get part of their revenue.

Re:Payment is the problem

[pod]

The barrier to micropayments is the 'micro' part. No one will remit electronic payment that in cents, never mind fractions of cents. So, you need an umbrella subscription service of sorts, Paypal, whoever.

You, as a micropayment maker (the user, the reader, the subscriber, etc) setup an account on this service, and visit whatever micropayment requiring sites you like. Instead of paying 1/2 cents every time, you add all the charges from all the sites and service at the end of the month, and send a single check. On the other side, the same thing is happening. Instead of paying all the web sites and services 1/2 cent payments, they add them all up at the end of the month, and send each web site a single check.

I'm sure it's already been done, but not marketed, and doesn't have a critical mass of users and web sites.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Doctor O]

Jesus, "insightful".

Maybe I, as a taxpayer, don't want my nickel going to the liberal/conservative/communist/libertarian rag on the corner, and I only want to financially support the local whack-job-environmentalist newsletter. Why should I be forced to subsidize the others?

It's called "democracy".

I think your government point alone is strong enough, your imaginative taxpayer is just a redneck.

Re:Payment is the problem

[bnenning]

I am NOT going to be nickeled and dimed to death with "micropayments" to every Tom Dick and Harry who thinks his useless two cents worth should be billed to the reader at that rate.

Right. Clay Shirky explained the basic problem with micropayments here:

Micropayments, like all payments, require a comparison: "Is this much of X worth that much of Y?" There is a minimum mental transaction cost created by this fact that cannot be optimized away, because the only transaction a user will be willing to approve with no thought will be one that costs them nothing, which is no transaction at all.

Re:Payment is the problem

[falconwolf]

Cost of gathering the newspapers at the curb, transporting to the sorting facility, sorting, storage, then extra processing to remove old ink.

Aren't those same costs there, except curbside collection, when trees are cut down to make the paper? Then what about after hillsides are clearcut? The trees help retain water and the roots of trees help the soil stay in place. Mudslides are very possible after the clearcutting of hills. Streams, creeks, and rivers have sediment build up thus causing more problems.

Most of it goes to making toilet paper.....

As much as I can I buy recycled, pre and post consumer, paper. Even the paper for my printer has post consumer recycled content. Actually I'd rather use hemp paper, however hemp posed a potential treat to many rich and powerful people so they made sure it was made illegal. Amoung them was DuPont, William Randolph Hearst, and Andrew Mellon. Then there was also Rockefeller and Rothschild.

Falcon Falcon

Re:Payment is the problem

[falconwolf]

Come to think of it, I remember reding about use of straw as a house building material. Perhaps bales of used newsprint could be used for that. Since the whole point is to do it in a way that prevents it from degrading, it should be a perfect form of sequestration with the resulting buildings being energy efficiant too (since they would be well insulated).

Straw Bale Construction

Re:Payment is the problem

[plague3106]

I understand you weren't digging at MS.

I just don't think they'll end up bowing to the pressure. I think that was one of the biggest pushers of people away from IE to FF...that FF had a popup blocker and IE didn't. MS ended up putting one in to compete I think.

I'm not sure how I follow how my post goes along; anything advertisers use to get around current technological blocks will likely be even more annoying (after all, if you went out of your way to block something and an advertiser finds away around it, you're gonna be REALLY pissed). Doing nothing won't work either...people learned the ads are annoying and aren't likely to turn off adblocking once its on. Why would they?

Re:Payment is the problem

[Wordsmith]

That would lead to a tyranny of the majority. One of the basic principles of modern democracy is that its basic rules protect those with unpopular views. In a year where the conservatives rule, how fair would it be to exclude the liberal media from this boondogle (or vice versa), and what avenue would the public use to learn about the other side.

Everyone in a democracy has a vested interest in a vigorous dialouge between those of opposing viewpoints.

Re:Payment is the problem

[DenDave]

und jetzt they have semi-pop-over block the interface kindof thingies which irritate me even more. I make an issue to complain if it is a major vendor that uses them. I know, drop in the ocean but every drop counts..

Re:Payment is the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

B3c@use Th3y @r3 3v1l !! -Bi11 G@t35 15 th3 G0@t53 m@n!!!!!

Re:Payment is the problem

[forrestt]

The online advertisement industry is still young (compared to the centuries of print advertisement). I don't think we have seen even one example of where or what a successful online ad will look like. I think what google ads do is probably close. Eventually advertisers will figure out what works (which is what I've been trying to say all along). There is too much monitary incentive for them not to persue it. No, popups/unders will NOT work, and will probably always be blocked. Graphical ads from an ad server are also too easy to block. But eventually, advertisers will figure out something that will work. And it won't be obtrusive so people wont go through the trouble to get around it.

If online ads weren't annoying, would you have gone through the trouble to block them? I didn't start blocking them until they started w/ the flashing and fake error messages (I did that because my girlfriend wasn't very technically savvy, and I didn't want her to think something was wrong with the computer and try to fix it). I do agree with you in that the advertisers did it to themselves. But if you think about it those advertisements were from small or startup companies. I don't recal ever seeing an annoying online ad from someone like Sears or WalMart. They were usually from some software company trying to sell spam blocking software or the like.

Re:Payment is the problem

[iamacat]

but the bottom line is that in a captitalist society, the method bringing in the most revenue is usually the preferred means of access to a partcular good or service.

I would say that's only true in "corpitalist society", where large companies maintain their revenue through monopoly or people's mindless tendency to follow the crowd. Where real cut-throat capitalism is at work, the primary concern would be to offer the lowest price and especially low cost of entry. This played out nicely when AOL was threatened by $19.95/month ISPs and was forced to dramatically lower their costs.

Re:Payment is the problem

[vita]

The problem is that whether you're publishing online or on paper, you still have to pay a staff of reporters, editors and photographers. That cost doesn't go away no matter how much newsprint you don't use.

At a small daily, the online ad revenue, while steadily increasing, would pay precious few reporters all by itself. National news sites do better because they're getting national ad dollars, but smaller news sites have trouble getting that business. And local advertisers are just starting to "get it" as far as online readership.

Re:Payment is the problem

[Paua Fritter]

That would lead to a tyranny of the majority.

How so?

According to this plan, people with minority viewpoints would also get a vote - they could vote for some left-wing newspaper/blog/tv channel/whatever, and their share of the "news" tax would go to that paper/blog/tv station. Simple as that.

I'm not proposing a winner-take-all system, like the US presidential election ... hell no :-)

Re:Payment is the problem

[plague3106]

There is too much monitary incentive for them not to persue it

Theh problem is the online ad industry created such hatred for themselves that people blocked it...and advertisers know this, and AREN'T willing to pay much for onine ads. So I don't think there is alot of monitary incentive...i think this industry shoot itself in teh foot too early on.

I started blocking ads when they wereonly a little annoying, after i found that loading from sits like doubleclick were also doing data mining, and also made pages three times longer to load.

Ads are still some of the last things to load..which is partly why I continue to block them.

Re:Payment is the problem

[forrestt]

You still haven't gotten my point. Forget everything you know about the way ads are currently implemented. They WILL NOT WORK. I agree with you on that. But that doesn't mean nothing will work. Eventually, someone will stumble across an ad mechinism that will be both effective and unobtrusive. At that point (and this may be many years in the future), businesses will start using them. And nothing you have currently done to block ads will block them, because they are not the type of ads you are currently blocking. They will be a part of the page, blending in like ads in a paper newspaper (probably something LIKE google ads). Since they won't be annoying, people aren't going to go through the trouble to block them (people are lazy, and will put up with a lot of annoyance before they do something to fix the problem). And, it wasn't the ad industry that was the problem. It was the same type of people that send spam. Products or services that are worth purchasing rarely have "in your face" advertising tactics. It is the cheap crap and scams that use this type of advertisment. Since putting an ad online is very cheap, this it the prefered place for fly-by-night operations.

free news content

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> Is the era of free news content about to end?

Paypal me $1 for the answer.

Re:free news content

[darth dickinson]

Almost everything else that was free (and legal) on the 'net is gone now. It's just a matter of time until the newspapers follow suit.

Sad, really. It's not like the newspapers actually turn a profit off of subscription fees...

Re:free news content

[chris_mahan]

Except of course for wikipedia and wikinews.

Re:free news content

[letxa2000]

Almost everything else that was free (and legal) on the 'net is gone now.

Like what? I'm not saying you're wrong and I'm sure you have examples. But as far as I recall I've never subscribed or paid for anything on the web (other than placing orders for physical goods) and I don't seem to feel any more restricted today than I did 5 or 10 years ago.

Re:free news content

[goodzilla]

"There is nothing so magical about the Internet that everything has to be free."
This is true :)
free is good but then what prevents free to be flawed by the salingers principle

Re:free news content

[micromoog]

Almost everything else that was free (and legal) on the 'net is gone now.

Um, what? There's an enormous amount of great, free content. More than ever before. The Web has grown at an amazing rate . . . perhaps paid content & garbage has grown at a rate greater than free, good content, but it's all grown.

It's all just a matter of knowing where to look, but thanks primarily to Google, that's gotten better and easier too.

Re:free news content

[zCyl]

Is the era of free news content about to end?

Yeah, it's going out like free TV and radio.

Re:free news content

[farghen]

Yeah, it's going out like free TV and radio.

Indeed, the major news sites will stay free via advertisements, exactly like TV and radio.

On the move

[Anonymous Coward]

What about people who read the paper on the train or bus? I have no desire to get my laptop out or have to read articles on a tiny mobile phone screen just to get my dose of news in a morning. I think newspapers in print will be a round a while yet, just to serve the needs of the communter. I couldn't survive my journey into Manchester without the Metro, and the letters page is always hilarious!

Re:On the move

[ZipR]

Here in DC, we have two different free dailies that you can pick up at the metro stop -- one is put out by the Washington Post. So between those and reading online, I can get all the newspaper news I need for free. At least for now!

Re:On the move

[Xiaran]

And any Londoners reading out there are also aware of the Metro. The Metro is a free daily that is ad driven(and from what I understand quite profitable). It is something of a tube commuters daily routine for most... Pick up coffee, pick up metro, curse the Northern Line for being broken again.

Nemi was quite good this morning.

Re:On the move

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth noting it's not only available in London. I commute regularly throughout the North of England and quite often pick up copies in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Newcastle. I'm sure it's also available in Birmingham.

It has the same content as the London version, but also local TV guides, local ads and local restaurant reviews.

Re:On the move

[TobascoKid]

And now the Evening Standard has started a free "Evening Standard Lite" in the afternoons.

Re:On the move

[jrumney]

When I lived in Birmingham 5 years ago, there were 2 free newspapers available there called "Metro". The one published by the Evening Standard/Daily Mail group, plus another one that was less widely available but I picked it up in New Street a few times when the other one was late arriving or had run out already when I got there.

Re:On the move

[Laurentiu]

Use a PDA. Just don't forget to recharge it in the evening. I've been doing it for years, and I never missed the printed versions. Especially since my PDA can hold in memory the equivalent of a small bookshelf, easily accessible through a few pen-strokes.

Re:On the move

[GWTPict]

Agreed, the freebie Metro makes the journey into Manchester much more pleasant. Bit pissed off that they've dropped the crossword though.

Re:On the move

[Anonymous Coward]

They still have Nemi. That's enough for me.

Re:On the move

[ergo98]

On a tiny, relatively low resolution display. No thanks.

I bought a PDA based upon this premise, and quickly realized that it was completely unworkable (at least for me). The PDA sat in the box for a year until I Ebayed it.

Re:On the move

[arekq]

What about people who read the paper on the train or bus?

In the future you will be "beamed" to the office. :)

Re:On the move

[Octagon Most]

In the future you will be "beamed" to the office.

More likely, in the future the office will be "beamed" to you.

Re:On the move

[droleary]

On a tiny, relatively low resolution display. No thanks.

What about tiny with no display? That is, podcasting (or whatever the hell you want to call it) news the same way you might use an audiobook. I suppose you could use a player with a display to make things easier, but bare bones like an iPod shuffle should work just as well. Start playing a story and skip on to the next one if something doesn't interest you. Papers would have to more directly compete with the likes of radio in doing so, but text-to-speech and user-directed search of content sure opens up some really interesting possibilities.

Re:On the move

[swiftstream]

Metro is great, and their business model actually works in some places. They just hit the 10 year mark here in Stockholm, where they started, and as I understand they make a healthy profit from advertising here, with over 600,000 readers every weekday. The market was even attractive enough that another major competitor has set up, called Stockholm City. You see them in the metro stations in the mornings, the Metro people all in green and the Stockholm City folks all in red, handing out free newspapers and chatting.

Tradeoff?

[onthefenceman]

What's the allure to the consumer of a "paper" paper? With an online newspaper, I can browse at work, for free, without getting ink on my hands.

Re:Tradeoff?

[delta_avi_delta]

It's all about tactility, presence, something real, that you can have and hold and possess. I don't care what anyone says, tactility brings a measure of comfort and pleasure you're not going to get from a screen. Then there's the smell of a fresh paper. I'm not saying that it's up there with the smell of frying bacon in the morning, but it adds to the experience. That's it - a print paper is an experience, text on a screen is just, boring...

Re:Tradeoff?

[SlamMan]

But not as easy to read on the train to work.

Re:Tradeoff?

[Tenebrious1]

What's the allure to the consumer of a "paper" paper? With an online newspaper, I can browse at work, for free, without getting ink on my hands.

The weight. The portability. The convenience. Yeah, I can pop open my laptop in bed, or at the kitchen table, but the physical paper is much easier to carry around from bed to kitchen. When on the subway, it's impossible to pop open a laptop to read the news. On the commuter train, you can use a laptop, but with the crowded seats the paper is still more convenient. During lunch if it's nice out I'll head to the park, maybe bring the paper with me. The actual paper is so much easier to carry around and to read than a full sized laptop. No, PDAs just don't work for reading news.

Re:Tradeoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the allure to the consumer of a "paper" paper?

Portability.

The print industry (books, newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals) is a half-trillion dollar industry in the US. Print may not seem glamourous, but generates more revenue than the movie, TV, and music industries combined.

The current uproar over content piracy is nothing compared to when we finally get an acceptable form of electronic paper. When downloading the latest Harry Potter, Tom Clancy, or National Inquirer becomes practical, that's when the real fighting will begin.

Re:Tradeoff?

[LocoMan]

Yeah, but it would look weird to carry your computer with you to read in the bathroom (I swear, that's the best reading seat in the whole house!!!).. :)

Re:Tradeoff?

[Tassach]

Speaking of reading the paper on the train, I just got off the train, where I had been reading a free hardcopy newspaper.

If giving away words printed on paper is a viable business model, there's no way you can argue that giving away words on a computer screen isn't. Walking through Union Station in the morning, I see no fewer than three different free daily newspapers. Obviously someone is making money doing this, otherwise they wouldn't keep doing it.

Re:Tradeoff?

[foobsr]

What's the allure to the consumer of a "paper" paper?

It may be read while visiting the restroom.

This was the argument of a couple of consumers in favour of a printed TV-programme magazine when I conducted a couple of in-depth interviews.

The foldable foil-display gadget will take care of he issue once it is there.

CC.

Re:Tradeoff?

[PoopJuggler]

You ever tried to swat your dog with a desktop or laptop computer?

Re:Tradeoff?

[ivan37]

Even better is having the whole paper on the screen without getting ink on your fingers. College Newsify has a really cool viewer for viewing full-page newspapers. Best of all, college students can read all of the newspapers for free.

Re:Tradeoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, insightful?!? *shudder*

Re:Tradeoff?

[GileadGreene]

And it's a lot more fun doing the crossword on an easily portable piece of paper...

Re:Tradeoff?

[ciroknight]

PDA's just don't work..

Speak for yourself. For the longest while, I was stuck without internet at home, so I'd simply run to school, sync my PDA with the news feeds from the week, and check mark the ones I wanted to read. Next morning, I'd sync again to download the actual articles. It may have been slow, but I actually got to read the news, and if I cared enough, I could have set it up to do it all in one fell swoop, but even then memory was a bit too expensive.

And now with WiFi PDAs, it should be even better to read the news on!!

Re:Tradeoff?

[CausticPuppy]

he weight. The portability. The convenience.

Exactly. Not to mention the other uses.
Have you ever used a laptop to line a bird cage? The keys get sticky.
Or house train a dog? You can really injure a puppy if you discipline it using the online version of NYT on your full-tower box.
Although some laptops seem to run hot enough to start fires, using a "paper" newspaper is a much better idea for a fireplace.

Paper gives you much better blanket coverage when sleeping on the subway. Chances are that if a bum has a laptop, he won't be needing to sleep on the subway anyway. It's also much harder to discreetly spy/follow somebody on the street if you're trying to walk around holding a laptop in front of your face.

Paper newspapers will never go away.

Re:Tradeoff?

[SlamMan]

Well, giving someone a paper has ads on it. You can't block these ads automatically.

Re:Tradeoff?

[Rinikusu]

And it's not just newspapers. While I agree that most magazines are fluff, I certainly love to have stacks of various journals (usually biology/science/astronomy related) around that I can peruse on a lazy Sunday afternoon and not have to worry about if the image server is down, the website address has changed, or the search is working on a particular site. I can't count the number of times when I've googled for something, gone to the site and get a glarin "Bandwidth exceeded", or 404 not found, or no pictures (just ugly red X's), etc.

I'd love if all journals/newspapers also did a complete "digitization" of their materials and released a yearly compendium on CD/DVD (just for quick searches), but nothing still quite beats the actual FEEL of reading a good paper-based product.

Re:Tradeoff?

[AviLazar]

yea, using a laptop in the bathroom stall - I just don't see that happening. Sides I never buy the paper, i just find someone who was kind enough to leave theirs behind... hmm maybe someone will be kind enough to leave their laptop behind in the bathroom stall :)

Re:Tradeoff?

[Stone Pony]

"If giving away words printed on paper is a viable business model, there's no way you can argue that giving away words on a computer screen isn't"

Only if you want to argue that all those words are of equal worth. Were these free papers sustaining international news-gathering operations? Were they paying leading commentators for their expertise and analysis? Or were they regurgitated agency copy bought in as a wrapper for ad content?

Free newspapers means one of two things: short-term promotional campaign (often just a single day and in a limited area); or minimal news content wrapped around a slew of ads for small local businesses, recipe features and reminiscence columns.

The first is obviously a promotional expense which is budgetted for and presumably costed into the paper's usual selling price. The second is fine in its place, and the apparent success (or at least survival) of so many publications of this type suggests that they occupy a genuine niche in the market. To suggest, as you appear to, that the existence of any free hard copy newspapers proves that all newspapers could be free on the web is just ridiculous.

Re:Tradeoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but it would look weird to carry your computer with you to read in the bathroom

Imagine what your mother would think...

Re:Tradeoff?

[Tassach]

You can't block these ads automatically.

Bullshit. It's called "mental filtering". I'm sure the paper I read this morning had ads in it, but I didn't notice any of them. You can skim over anything that looks like an ad without any concious effort.

Re:Tradeoff?

[lamber45]

Why carry it? Just install a flatscreen monitor and waterproof keyboard, and a wall-mounted box running VNC or something. In fact, if you just want to read the news, all you need is a web browser.

Re:Tradeoff?

[ThJ]

Mod parent up! *guffaw*

Re:Tradeoff?

[danila]

PDAs do work for reading, because many have screens with better resolution than desktop monitors. And there are also slate tablet PCs that can be handled much easier than laptops, i.e. you don't need to pop open it, you can handle it like a (very heavy) newspaper.

Re:Tradeoff?

[Oliver Defacszio]

Yes. I still miss him.

Re:Tradeoff?

[alc6379]

What's the allure to the consumer of a "paper" paper?

If you smack your dog with a rolled-up newspaper, it can be looked at as discipline.

If you smack your dog with a cellphone, PDA or laptop, it is looked at as abuse.

I'm joking folks-- don't hit your dog.

Re:Tradeoff?

[Anonymous Coward]

Word. I wish I had mod points to help you out.

Unless of course, the GP's local Free Times actually has an international reporting bureau in Kabul. In which case, boy, would we look silly.

So wait...

[Kenja]

Are you saying that having no source of revenue is a poor buisness model? Whell now you tell me, thats just great.

Re:So wait...

[TheAncientHacker]

No, no. Don't listen to them. Really. You're a geek. We really don't want to get paid for what we do. Really. That's just for marketing people, and executives, and the guy who empties the trash.

Really. Remember. Gift Culture. Gift Culture. Gift Culture. Free as the beer you can't buy with your "thanks".

Can't beat the Beeb.

[caluml]

You can't beat the good old BBC. They even have pages in many different languages. And because they don't rely on advertising, they don't have to suckle on the corporate teat. Get your (pretty much) unbaised news here.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[paullush]

And you dont have to run the NY Times registration generator (http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html) each time that you want to read a page

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[hey!]

Yeah, but try housebreaking your puppy on the Beeb.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[RonnyJ]

The BBC News site is only effectively free for those that don't pay a UK license fee - it's funded from part of that.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[Morris Thorpe]

And because they don't rely on advertising, they don't have to suckle on the corporate teat.

Hold it. You're saying news organizations bow to the entities that fund them. So by your logic, the BBC is a tool for the government. Is that any better?

And just because they don't rely on advertising does not mean they don't cost people money. The average UK household pays £116 a year for it. That might be a free alternative for those outside the country, but not to those the BBC is designed to serve.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[bfields]

You can't beat the good old BBC

I like the BBC, but they don't cover local US politics. They cover lots of important stuff, but I also think it's important to have someone putting my mayor on the spot occasionally....

--Bruce Fields

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's pretty sad when people write off money they pay to the government as money they wer enever entitled to.

It would make it a lot harder for politicians to raise taxes if people had to physically pay their entire tax bill every year.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[ewe2]

Not for long. The BBC's charter is under review again and the calls for privatisation that come at such times are just as loud. But the Hutton inquiry did real damage this time, and some politicians smell blood.

This Sunday Times article is a representative overview in the online media about the likelihood of a sale, but a swift Google reveals that some of these arguments have been going on for years.

Frankly, all public broadcasting and their associated websites are seen as unfair competition by the corporations, and must be stopped from undercutting their valuable market.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[misterpies]

Except that the BBC is not funded by the government, but by viewers. It is funded by a compulsory levy on TV owners, true, but that money is not a "tax" in the sense that it is not paid to the government - it's paid to the BBC.

Which by the above logi makes the BBC a tool of the people, not the government or the corporations. And yes, that is better.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would make it a lot harder for politicians to raise taxes if people had to physically pay their entire tax bill every year.

It would make it a lot harder for politicians to lower taxes if people had to fix their own roads, educate their own children, and fight their own wars. You made your money from the community, you're obligated to contribute some of it to that community as well.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[minus_273]

hey, that's what the Beeb is best used for

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[Anonymous Coward]

This Sunday Times article is a representative overview in the online media about the likelihood of a sale, but a swift Google reveals that some of these arguments have been going on for years.

The Government published their plans for the BBC charter for the next ten years and it basically leaves the online services alone. You want to be careful about anything you read about the BBC in the Murdoch press (The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, The News of the World) as Murdoch has no made no secret of his dislike for the BBC and its funding mechanism.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[micromoog]

I tried that, but he became entirely too haughty and his sense of humor was too dry for most of my friends.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be an englishman. Of all the Brits nobody knows how to whine quite like the english.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't complain. With all the unnecessary crap funded by public money, a solid news organization should be last on anyone's shit list.

Re:Can't beat the Beeb.

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent post! Kudos.

Re:I got news for ya!

[sisifo]

OLE!!

Online news isn't free

[Anonymous Coward]

unless they just let advertisers use their site for nothing, get rid of the adverts and people might pay, or just go elsewhere, thats the trouble with online stuff, going elsewhere is just a click away

Doesn't look that way to this DC resident

[Cy Guy]

As long as paper is cheaper than video screens there will be free papers. Case in point, Washing, DC just gained a new free daily The Washington Examiner in the last month, and within the last two year the Washington Post launched its own freebie paper, The Express.

They both seem to have viable business models and in fact the Express has already decimated small group of targetted suburban papers that had cost $.35 which have now either gone out print, or or free depending on the suburban county each served. And the Post is finding that its free paper is doing better than it is. Though I think that growth will slow because of the Examiner which seems closer to a real newspaers (if one only on par to the NY Post or NY News) than the Express which consists entirely of heavily cropped wire stories. The Examiner at least has unique features and few of its own writers - plus it runs in depth wire stories, especially in SPORTS - which with the launch of the Washington Nationals should 'sell' a lot of free papers.

Re:Doesn't look that way to this DC resident

[justforaday]

And the Post is finding that its free paper is doing better than it is.

It doesn't hurt that the guys handing them out at the Metro stations shove them in your face even when you say "no thanks."

Re:Doesn't look that way to this DC resident

[Ironsides]

Just to let you know, "The Examiner" used to be "The Northern Virginia Journal" (or something like that). All I remember is that I used to call it "The Journal" for short. They just renamed themselves for the most part. (under the old name the were still free).

The Post launched "The Expres" to compete with "The Journal" when it started taking away their readership (and hence advertising revenue). Just some info from someone across the river in NVA.

Re:Doesn't look that way to this DC resident

[eebly]

The Express is a good quick read for the metro ride, but doesn't have the rich, full-bodied taste of a full newspaper. Also has mostly the same news I get in the 5-minute NPR headlines, but it's something to do while waiting for/cramming into trains.

As for the Examiner...there's enough issues about it that I find it dubious and avoid it. For example, they litter all over, including in my Arlington neighorhood. Of course, only certian neighborhoods are getting the Examiner tossed on their doorstep, and those seem to be 'selected' areas (re: white and rich). And, the Examiner regularly publishes articles on properties owned by their parent company without acknowledging the connection (ie: they ran a big piece on the DC United, which is owned byt he Examiner's owner).

All free media isn't created equal.

Re:Doesn't look that way to this DC resident

[brandorf]

It's not quite the same thing, but The Onion (Not News at all, but still) is free to residents of Wisconsin. Their online service however, is subsciption based if you want to read into the archives, or get rid of the ads on the page.

Re:Doesn't look that way to this DC resident

[Anonymous Coward]

You folks don't know what your talking about...The Journal papers are owned/were owned by the same company that owns the Examiner and the Journals shifted to a free model prior to Express being launched by Washington Post. The Journals were already in the toilet prior to Express...people didn't' want to pay money for weak local news coverage and it's not easy to sell ad space with tiny circ numbers so they decided to up the numbers by just giving it away and dumping a fair bit of their news staff in the process.

As for Express doing "better" than the Post, circ numbers on a free paper are meaningless. Look at the ad rates to see the real story. Express has bumped up its "circ" but did they bumped up their rates accordingly? If they didn't, then they aren't gaining actual value but "buying" readers advertisers aren't actually paying to reach.

The Examiner does have some feature stories, but they are mostly recycled from last week's SF Examiner or a Canadian newspaper owned by Philip Anschutz who also owns the DC Examiner.

The theory behind free papers is that they are designed for "busy" people who don't have time for a real newspaper (or that's what they say...most people won't say "I'm too lazy to read a paper I actually have pay for or I choose to be ignorant")...just something light and breezy to read on the train and that they can toss.

Free papers will grow in the near term but paid newspapers won't die off, although mid market tabloids like the NYC Daily News might get killed off....You'll have free papers designed with proles in mind and then you'll have lower circ newspapers that cost a $1 an issue targeted at highly educated/high income people that have miuch higher edit/ad ratios that current mass market newspapers.

Like most things in life, you get what you pay for.

Yeah, where were you in 2000...

[blueZ3]

When the startup I worked for decided to sell at a loss and make it up in volume?

Free news? Sure,..now more than ever

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Is the era of free news content about to end?

No, here in Washington DC in the last year we have seen the launch of 2 free newspapers, dailies in fact. The Post's Express and the Examiner. Add that to the Citypaper and we have three.

We are quite saturated with free news.

Re:Free news? Sure,..now more than ever

[Tassach]

There's also the Georgetowner. I walk by a rack of them every day when I get off the MARC train.

Re:Free news? Sure,..now more than ever

[letxa2000]

Here in Monterrey Mexico, there is one major local paper: El Norte. They used to have a free website that gave full access to everything in their printed paper. Well about a year or two ago they started charging; and not just a little, they're charging MXP$450 for 3 months! That's about US$40 per quarter, or $13/month! Consider that their paper subscription is N$550/quarter ($16/month) and you have to wonder what they're smoking.

Needless to say I stopped reading their newspaper and, no, I don't buy the print version either. The only thing I miss is some local news in Monterrey--everything else is covered and available for free elsewhere. And there's simply not enough news going on in Monterrey to justify paying US$13/month to read about it online.

I also don't know how well their subscription system has done. I don't know anyone who has subscribed, though I do know of a lot of people who use "borrowed" accounts.

Re:Free news? Sure,..now more than ever

[Anonymous Coward]

We are quite saturated with free news.

If the free dailies in DC are anything like those in NYC, you're not being saturated with free news, you're being saturated with advertising. Our free papers are not even remotely in-depth, just a big headline, a dozen or so brief summaries of wire stories (half or more of those being "entertainment" or "fashion" news), and lots of ads.

Re:Free news? Sure,..now more than ever

[rob_squared]

Or The Metro, in the Boston area.

Reg free link

[bendelo]

Reg-free link

Re:Reg free link

[Anonymous Coward]

With people bandying around free links like this to their content, is it any wonder they're not making any money?

Re:Reg free link

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent +1 Ironic

Re:Reg free link

[Anonymous Coward]

That's their problem of providing free registrations.

No it's not about to end

[Kimos]

Every time someone is trying to charge for a service on the internet, another provider will emerge and offer it for free. That free service will inevitably will be viewed more and gain credibility.

It's the same story. Nothing to see here, move along!

Re:No it's not about to end

[Anonymous Coward]

...until it runs out of money.

Re:No it's not about to end

[TuringTest]

There's an old adage saying that capitalism will kill itself when every producer gives their product for free to better competing.

I think we are reaching that era now (at least for information business).

Re:No it's not about to end

[minkie]

That depends. If the service is a commodity (you can get essentially the same quality product from any vendor), then certainly price becomes the only differentiator (and there's no better price than free). But, the NY Times is not a commodity. The quality of the writing, and the depth of the news gathering organization sets it apart from others in the field. If I want commodity news, I'll read the AP newswire (and even that isn't free). Some people claim that the NY Times has a liberal bias to their news reporting. Even assuming that were true, that's still a differentiator which sets them apart :-) The rule of thumb in the newspaper business is that the revenue from sales of the paper pays for the actual production costs (paper, ink, running the presses, delivery to newsstands, etc). Looking at their most recent financials (http://nytco.com/pdf-reports/2004-ar10K/cons-stmt s-of-income.pdf), that appears to be vaguely true. Circulation revenue was $0.9B, and total production costs were $1.5B. Advertising revenue was $2.2B. They make a lot more money from selling ads than selling newspapers. I used to buy the NY Times (paper edition) almost every day. At today's prices, 5 days a week plus Sunday, minus some subscriber discount, figure I'd be spending $150-200/year on the paper. The WSJ charges $79/year for full access. If the NY Times were to charge that same amount, it would be a bargain. The hard thing to figure out is if enough people will actually pay for it that way. Full disclosure: I own a few shares of NYT.

Re:No it's not about to end

[AviLazar]

until that free service is changed to a pay service. It tends to go that route...the little guy comes up and says "hey look you can have this wonderful product for free. It offers the same as the pay guy, but it's free, and since we are small we will give you extra attention".... and then they start to charge.

Nothing wrong with it---someone has to pay for the web design, bandwidth, advertising, research, document, writing, etc. This stuff costs money and it is going to be paid by the creators (I doubt they want to do this), advertisers (which makes the creators have to appease the advertisers), or by us.

Re:No it's not about to end

[Anonymous Coward]

you're underestimating....
a subscription to the paper runs $46 every 4 weeks, or about $600/yr

BBC

[Cougem]

The BBC will always be around. Well, for us Brits anyway....

Ads

[FuturePastNow]

The advertising model looks appealing now, but do we want our future to depend on that single source of revenue? What happens if advertising goes flat? What happens when somebody develops software to filter out advertising - TiVo for the Web?"

Thanks, AdBlock (and BugMeNot)! This article would have been much more annoying without you.

Re:Ads

[Anonymous Coward]

I just use this host file, which I've found to be one of the best at blocking most ads on-line. I use it both on my Windows and Linux boxes.

Re:Ads

[FuturePastNow]

Offtopic? I quoted from the article and replied to it.

It was never free in the first place...

[oscartheduck]

It was just without charge.

Re:It was never free in the first place...

[Azi Dahaka]

May I refer you to Webster, definition 10 for free:

10 : not costing or charging anything

Re:It was never free in the first place...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you whine about the words "piracy" and "theft" too.

Re:It was never free in the first place...

[oscartheduck]

You may refer me to any definition you wish, however the humour of my pun remains.

The Metro

[Anonymous Coward]

Where else can I find out the opinions of 3 random people on non-contraversial issues?

Paper vs Online

[Anonymous Coward]

This reminds me of an interesting article I read a few weeks back on the debate at the NY Times about their online publication, and specifically whether to start charging a premium for the online content. The one side indicated that by charging for the content online, they are limiting viewership and people will simply go to alternative sites which are easily available. If they do not charge, and instead derive sole revenue from advertisers, they risk destroying one of the last remaining truly investigative news institutions and corrupting it by trying to keep the advertisers happy.
And on a side-note, the Boston Globe just bought an interest in the freely distributed Boston Metro daily newspaper, which derives its revenue from advertisers. Times owns the Globe.

We're also in the era...

[Nijika]

Of the more savvy consumer. I don't think anyone's blind to advertising revenues, and the idea of paying to see ads is getting more and more insulting as time marches on.

Re:We're also in the era...

[Hyperspac]

That's the advantage of hardcopy papers. The readers may not be looking at your adds, but I don't think anyone has come up with a way to block them.

Re:We're also in the era...

[Anonymous Coward]

"the idea of paying to see ads is getting more and more insulting"

It's not just news, this is a problem more general than this thread indicates...

4 years ago I signed up for digital satellite dish service. I eagerly anticipated the great, noise-free picture, the sci-fi channel, the discovery channel and fun movies.

3 years ago, I called and cancelled. When asked why we were cancelling I exitedly explained that I WON'T PAY $30 A MONTH FOR A DAMN STREAM OF ADS!!!. I think she understood that, but obviously the executives still haven't seen the light. After repeatedly sitting down to relax and enjoy some content, and instead getting the 3rd commercial block (of the same damn commercials, mind you) within 20 minutes, I had just simply had enough of it!

Please, everyone - repeat this mantra thrice before each tv session:

"Commercials shall not supplant paid content."
"Commercials shall not supplant paid content."
"Commercials shall not supplant paid content."

Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[asdfasdfasdfasdf]

The amount you pay for a daily newspaper does not even cover the printing and distribution costs. All money made by the paper (and the majority of production costs) is covered by advertising-- print ads and classifieds. The $.25 or $.50 you pay barely covers the paper and ink.

Web distribution is negligible on daily per-person basis.

The problem here is the failure of online advertising. Somehow during the dotcom boom "per click" payment became the obsession. It seems on the web "branding" or "product awareness" is no longer valuable. There's no perfectly quantifiable way to tell if these sort of ads work in newspapers or television, but if they're not getting the clicks they want, the advertisers say "web advertising doesn't work!!"

I think the obvious answer to this is local data, such as google local. Using your ip address to find your locality and serving up neighborhood ads is the only way for this business model to work-- not just advertising pizza hut, but putting pizza hut's local numbers in the ads you see will help.

But you guys can't have it both ways-- if you block the ads through your browser or your host list, you can't expect free content forever. That's why i don't use anything (other than a popup blocker, of course) to prohibit ads. They are what allow us to consume "free" content.

Remember that next time you block one of these guys. Or go ahead and pay for that content. Slashdot's business model should lead the way! :-)

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[clickety6]

But you guys can't have it both ways-- if you block the ads through your browser or your host list, you can't expect free content forever. That's why i don't use anything (other than a popup blocker, of course) to prohibit ads. They are what allow us to consume "free" content.

And exactly how do they tell that you are blocking ads and I am not? Unless you are actively reading those ads, follwing the links and then buying something! then there is really not much difference between you and me as fas as the seller is concerned - except you just used some of his bandwidth ;-)

Besdies which, even if I do keep the ads on display, most sites advertise stuff which I can't buy outside the US anyway - so they're wasting their time with me and other non-USA-dwelling netizens.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[aug24]

And even if we do block them, it just means that the paper has to host the ads too.

Personally I just block anything that moves, and all flash on the grounds it is going to move.

J.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[1u3hr]

Using your ip address to find your locality and serving up neighborhood ads is the only way for this business model to work-- not just advertising pizza hut, but putting pizza hut's local numbers in the ads you see will help.

As always, the porn industry is leading the way in online commerce.

Very recently I've noticed "Adult Friend Finder" ads are doing this -- the ads say "find women in XXX", where X is a suburb near me ... after freaking for a moment I realised that's where my ISP was.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[mapmaker]

But you guys can't have it both ways-- if you block the ads through your browser or your host list, you can't expect free content forever.

You're right, sort of. It's important that the masses not start using ad blockers or free content will dry up. But I think we members of the tech elite can and should keep using our AdBlocks and our WebWashers.

So when Aunt Edna asks you why the NY Times site looks so clean and white on your computer just remember - ix-ney on the ocker-bley.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[bitingduck]

As long as they display ads that are no more obtrusive than in the print versions I don't bother trying to block them. The things that are annoying:
- things that create new windows (pop-up/under)
- things that block the content I'm trying to look at until I find someplace to click it away
- things that display a big full window ad in which I have to find a "skip this ad" link before I can see the stuff I'm looking for.

If they simply flow text around the ads (that stay within their defined boundaries-- I don't care if they move), that's just fine, and if they're relevant to something I'm looking for I might even click them. Sometimes I even seek them out when I'm actively shopping.

Print media providers have managed to sell large volumes of ads for a long time without having a "pay-per-click" feature, and will eventually find a way to make that work on the web without being annoying.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[Anonymous Coward]

great, this means that any single or otherwise available women in the state of Virginia will be advertised to every AOL subscriber just about everywhere based on proximity to the AOL proxy servers.

Will all single women have to move to Virginia or make false statements that this is the state in which they live?

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[fanblade]

The physical, tactile newspaper is always going to exist. But it's popularity is doomed in my opinion. Each generation gets more familiar with the web as a whole. And this may just be my experience, but I think less and less young people are getting into the routine of reading the paper with their coffee each day. Now the newspaper execs may blame this on the rising prices of coffee, but I consider the papery paper outdated. I'm 23.

I boycott (block) banner ads. Now if I had been responding to ads in the first place, my choice to block them would actually affect the industry. But the fact remains that in my many years of surfing I have never, even once, bought something because of a banner ad. When I was younger I may have clicked 4 or 5 of them to see what was up. I am no longer a click-contributing person, therefore it makes no difference whether I block ads.

Besides, I would rather see text ads replace banner ads. I don't block text ads.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[Anonymous Coward]

But you guys can't have it both ways-- if you block the ads through your browser or your host list, you can't expect free content forever. That's why i don't use anything (other than a popup blocker, of course) to prohibit ads. They are what allow us to consume "free" content.

I disagree. We shouldn't have to modify our behavior to fit their business model, they should be modifying their business model to fit our behavior.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[EvilStein]

My old IP block showed up as being in New York.

I'm near San Francisco. GeoIP stuff doesn't seem to be very useful. :(

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[DisKurzion]

I agree that online advertising has failed. It has failed for the same reason I find radio and TV almost unwatchable. Because almost no matter what, the company decides that if some advertising is good, more advertising is better.

Why are there so many ads on basic cable? Because broadcasters realized they could charge for broadcast AND make ad revenue.

Advertising will always exist on the net. Even if the whole system goes to a "micropayment" style, ads will be reintroduced as a way of "keeping costs down".

Besides, I am totally jaded with ads. Almost everything has ads now, and I'm sick of it. Ads on TV(in TV shows), radio, in movies, on billboards, in stores, in print, and on the net. And we already pay for TV, movies, and print (books, magazines, newspapers, etc).

I'll use whatever methods are available to me to block ads, because I know that no matter what, the corporate world will always try to feed me more.

Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely..

[Grishnakh]

Actually, they can see if you're loading the images when you load the web page. It's pretty easy to see if you have ad-blocking enabled (esp. if the ad images are coming from the same server as the content).

More net viewers is a GOOD thing

[Jumperalex]

" the Times now has more online readers than print readers. "

While I'm sure subscriptions have probably declined I would still contend that the reason for this statement has more to do with the larger audience that is conveniently reached than it does with the decline in subscriptions. And yes I know you can subscribe to the NYT even if you don't live anywhere near NY, but it isn't the same thing as having it available right in your office.

So this statement is a little misleading without some real numbers. In fact having more online readers than print readers means more eyeballs for selling ads.

Re:More net viewers is a GOOD thing

[flynn_nrg]

Exactly. I read the online version of NYTimes daily, and I don't even live in the US. I like to get my news from various sources, and they usually have interesting articles.

Wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this have something to do with the NYT buying 49% of the Metro?

Irony vs Coincidence

[ticklemeozmo]

how ironic!

My favorite way of helping people realize the difference between irony and coincidence is as follows:

"Irony deals with opposites. Coincidence deals with the same. If a rescue helicopter happened to kill the person they were trying save, that might be a form of irony. The fact you are an idiot, and unable to differenciate between irony and coincidence, my friend, is just a coincidence."

Re:Irony vs Coincidence

[nine-times]

Well, technically, coincidence only means 'things that happen together'-- or any occurrence of things which co-incide.

It became a common usage to talk about things which seemed connected but were not as "mere coincidence", meaning the fact that they happened together only indicated that they happened together, and nothing else. However, this grew into a colloquial use of the word "coincidence", all by itself, to mean "an occurrence of multiple events which seem connected but are not," which is, perhaps, the most common usage.

Irony, on the other hand, has many senses. The generally accepted idea behind irony is that what occurs somehow opposes what was expected to occur. Therefore, a coincidence can be ironic if it is somehow unexpected or contrary to intuition.

Perhaps ironically, the association of "coincidence" and "ironic" as synonyms may have come from conventions of ironic (sarcastic) speech-- i.e. the phrases "what a coincidence..." and "that's ironic..." can both be spoken sarcastically to emphasize that two events are connected in exactly the way they seem to be.

Re:Irony vs Coincidence

[cwest]

an article questioning the long term viability of free registration to read a newspaper which itself requires free registration may be considered incongruous. Which is a type of irony. As is not using a dictionary.

Re:Irony vs Coincidence

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Irony: 2A Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs

dictionary.com

One might expect that the Times would take it's own advice, however what actually occurred is that the Times instead requires registration.

Re:Irony vs Coincidence

[nasor]

Actually, 'irony' is defined as "difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is".

For example, it is indeed ironic that the New York Times is running a story about how a particular business model probably isn't viable, yet uses that very same business model themselves.

Here's another example: someone who posts a self-important message on slashdot correcting a misuse of the term "ironic," when in fact they are the one who is failing to recognize a legitimate case of irony.

Re:Irony vs Coincidence

[Anonymous Coward]

You're obviously an expert on Irony.

irony Audio pronunciation of "irony" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (r-n, r-)
n. pl. ironies

1.
1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.
2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning.

The New York Times is reporting about the disappearance of free online newspapers, and questioning the viability of the free model, whilst at the same time offering a free newspaper online.
You could see that as irony, since they seem to be saying something different to what they mean.

However, you could also interpret it as a warning that they might not be free for much longer ;), and it's also doubtfull that they were deliberately saying something different to make a point....

But in any case, situational irony - which is what you described - is just one form (and many doubt that it even _is_ a form) of irony.

The principal form of Irony is the one which most people confuse with scarcasm - saying something different or the oposite of what you mean to make a point. (Sarcasm is similar, but is probably better described as "nasty irony")

So whilst it may not be ironic, I don't think you should be throwing words like idiot around as you seem to have demonstrated that you're not entirely sure what it is either.

Illustrating your lack of knowledge of irony in an attempt to tell someone else that they don't know what irony is - ironic? maybe...

The Hook

[Anonymous Coward]

'The first one (or first ten years, I suppose) is always free'

I have to admit I don't know what I'd do if the NYT started charging for online material. As an American overseas, I refer to the NYT and the Seattle Times (the hometown rag) every day to keep tabs on things at home. I might just pay the subscription fee.

though I'd be a lot more likely to pay it if they stopped running headlines like 'Strict curbs on vehicle emissions fuel debate.' How many bloody puns can one fit in a headline?

in other news

[rubycodez]

corporations are willing to pay money to advertise in popular web sites.

Re:article text

[3nuff]

This was good, but you forgot to credit the writer and give the title of the article.

Obligatory Ghostbusters Tie-In

[Safety Cap]

JANINE: You're very handy, I can tell. I bet you like to read a lot, too.

SPENGLER: Print is dead.

Advertising just isn't enough.. is it?

[ShinSugoi]

Ever since the dot-com crash, advertising hasn't been very profitable for most websites. Only sites that run invasive pop-ups or use unscrupulous techniques to install spyware typically have any sort of decent returns on advertising.

Considering that even those techniques aren't enough for many sites to even pay for upkeep, it seems obvious that the expenses of quality news reporting make "free" news nearly impossible without the support of for-pay print media paying the bills. It's going to take some sort of revolutionary payment system that actually works (unlike micropayments) to maintain the current system once physical newspaper readership really starts to decline.

Re:Advertising just isn't enough.. is it?

[mysticgoat]

I'm surprised that we haven't yet seen any DHTML techniques that counter ad blocking. I envision Alice clicking on a story and getting only the first paragraph because she has blocked the ads from that site while Bob gets the whole story because an ad that he is not blocking is rewriting the DOM to display or download the rest of the story. I think that coupled with a server side counter of the number of times the ad was actually displayed might be the basis for a better ad revenue model than pay per click.

I think innerHTML, HttpXmlRequest, and so on would be available on any browser with ad blocking capability. I think with something like this, and the user ability to turn ad blocking on and off by web site, we'd end up with marketplace forces determining what is acceptable in advertising.

BBC is not unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

I like reading the BBC, but the British point of view that they provide is very much slanted with a British point of view.

That isn't bad except in points concerning anything that goes against certain delusive positions that the Brits have taken throughout the centuries:

1. Northern Ireland.
2. British domination of 'subject' nations
3. How the British greed created the current problems in the mid-east by creating states where there ought not to have been states (Saudi Arabia, Iraq)
4. Collective amnesia about certains atrocities of the past such as the shameful British invasion of Tibet in the first decade of the last century.

How does having a state sponsered news organization guarantee that there are a lot of differing ideas expressed? It doesn't seem to as far as I can tell.

And all of the pandering towards the Royals. Really, if you aren't British who cares?

I like BBC, but it is biased towards British and unless you are British, maybe you can't see this?

I love the British, but don't like how they won't ever appologize even when they should. And that N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[caluml]

And that N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already.

Uhuh. So what country are you from? I'm sure that your country has/is making mistakes. At least we have learnt that you can't go looting a country, and not accept the consequences afterwards.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly enough.. the BBC is the *only* news organization in the world which is legally obligated to be unbiased.

It is part of their mission statement... How well they actually do at it is up for debate.. but at least they do have some sort of accountability on the matter, which is more than can be said for any American news organizations.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we have learnt that you can't go looting a country, and not accept the consequences afterwards.

And what exactly did we loot? Seems to me Iraq is costing a *lot* more than it is returning. They could at least give us a deal on oil, but Bush probably wouldn't accept it anyway.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[caluml]

And what exactly did we loot? Seems to me Iraq

Well, at least you accept that one. Look back in your history for lots of examples of affecting other countries for your own ends - overthrowing governments, supplying terrorists with weapons to attack other countries, or supplying satellite info to Saddam Hussein are just a few examples.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Phillip2]

> Northern Ireland.

The BBC has covered Northern Ireland extensively, including lots of new reporting on the bloody sunday inquiry, documentaries, dramas and so on.

>And that N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already.

How can this happen? Are you suggesting that the majority of Northern Ireland should just leave their homes?

>How the British greed created the current problems in the mid-east by creating states

Again, I think our colonial past has been covered extensively. We are fairly aware of the consequences of the decisions of our ancestors. They are all around us, after all.

>And all of the pandering towards the Royals.

In this, you are correct, although it's true of the UK media in general. I only care because I have to pay for them.

On the flip side, I am not sure that the Royal stories are any more silly than the attitude to unimportant celeb's in general.

>How does having a state sponsered news organization guarantee that there are a lot of differing ideas expressed?

The BBC has a public service remit, it has a management which is divorced somewhat from the political process, and comes under regularly public scrutiny (cf the Hutton inquiry). In short, it's a democratically accountable body. This doesn't guarentee anything. But on the whole, I think it provides a degree more independence than a corporate body.

The BBC is not perfect, but it's a very good thing.

And just to remain on topic, then website is excellent.

Phil

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[betelgeuse-4]

"And that N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already." It's not that simple. This poll shows that 38% of Northern Irelanders are Unionists (who want it to remain part of the UK). They will oppose any move to make N. Ireland part of the Republic, and an Independent N.I. would have conflicts between the same groups as today. The Northern Ireland Assembly may one day evolve into a stable government where conflicts are resolved in a civil manner. However there are many obstructions that need to be dealt with before that happens.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[TobascoKid]

N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already.

You do realize that the majority of the of the population are:

1) Protestant
2) Because of 1, have a greater affinty towards the United Kingdom than they do the Catholic south.

If the majority of the population of NI wanted out of the UK, they'd have left the Union already. The reason why NI is still a part of the UK is that the majority of the population are Unionists and not Republicans.

Or are you advocating that the will of the minority should overrule the will of the majority (along with the inevitable ethnic cleansing that would follow)?

Tk

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Eccles]

And that N. Ireland thing really bugs me. Get out already.

You should understand that the majority of the residents of Northern Ireland do not favor independence. Telling them to "get out" would be akin to telling most Americans to get out and return this country to its rightful Amerind owners.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Knight2K]

Not to ignite a conflict which seems to have cooled a great deal in the last decade or so, but my understanding is the demographic of Catholic to Protestant is actually about even.

I took a class in college four or five years ago about the representation of the NI conflict in the media. One of the issues we discussed is that the demographic breakdown of Catholic to Protestant in NI is somewhat uncertain.

People are wary of determining what the real number is. If Protestants are found to be the majority, this could ignite Catholic violence since the Protestants will have a majority they can point to in order to stay in the UK and the Catholics would feel more repressed then they currently do. Conversely, violence from the Protestants could be sparked if they feel that the Catholics are making a move to join the Republic.

In the interests of peace and political stability, most people put the number about even. I've seen numbers that the Catholics actually have a narrow majority, but your information suggests different.

As an aside, the Catholic and Protestant labels are, in some sense, a convenience since each nation had strong religious ties. The whole conflict is over an original invasion by the English a few hundred years ago and the back and forth between the parties since then.

The fact that the two nations happened to have, at the time, strong opposing religious views probably contributes to the friction, but it is by no means the primary issue. The struggle is mostly an issue of class, especially in modern times.

There is a perception that the Protestants are generally higher class and better off than their Catholic neighbors. This is most likely a legacy of the English invasion and the redistribution of lands to transplanted Scottish clans. Again, the truth is that both groups are probably fairly even economically.

All that said, the information I have is now a few years old and it is possible some variables have changed.

To quote Monty Python: "Let's not go arguing over who killed who. This is supposed to be a happy occasion!". Peace is moving forward in NI and both sides seem to be satisfied or at least equally unhappy. Anything else is water under the bridge in my mind. Forget about getting out of NI, let's stop fighting and killing about something that happened hundreds of years ago and set about making life better for everyone.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[cheesybagel]

How about solution #3? Neither. Do not make it part of either the Republic of Ireland or the United Kingdom. Just make it a sovereign country.

Luxembourg is smaller...

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

You really seem to be projecting your personal stereotypes and biases onto the BBC. Alhough I'm not British, I find the BBC to be relatively unbiased. While it's certainly not perfect, I find that it generally provides more balanced coverage of international affairs than any other news source.

As for your "get our already" comment, you seem to have a simplistic view of the situation in NI. Firstly, many people in Northern Ireland are content to remain as part of the UK. Secondly, the the British government would probably have already withdrawn from the province if it could, considering the cost of supporting the military presence and economic subsidies. However, the resulting power vacuum would throw the six counties into turmoil. Of course, the lack of desire is more due to pragmatism than altruism. In addition, since the Republic of Ireland certainly does not have the economic or security resources to deal with such a situation alone, a bilateral and measured approach to the problem is required.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree with your sentiment, your analogy is a little incorrect.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the obvious solution, especially in the context of closer EU integration. However, it seems likely that neither side would agree to the idea.

Re:BBC is not unbiased

[sv0f]

>How the British greed created the current problems in the mid-east by creating states

Again, I think our colonial past has been covered extensively. We are fairly aware of the consequences of the decisions of our ancestors. They are all around us, after all.

Mostly in the British Museum. ;-)

PS: Check out the poll at the bottom of http://www.parthenonuk.com/!

How can we live without news???

[Taladar]

What would we do if we wouldn't know all the important news in today's papers? What would we do if we wouldn't know how many people were bombed in Israel today and how many civilians the Israel military shot in response? What would we do if we didn't get the latest voting results from Timbuktu? What would we do if we didn't know of the traveller to Africa who came back with Malaria? What would we do if we couldn't read the latest "scientific" results about what is bad or good for us and how it will affect our lifespan?

I don't want to get dramatic but the real important news (like layoffs in an industry related to our own job e.g.) would spread without the big news sources and most of the rest is the same every day anyway.

Re:How can we live without news???

[Tenebrious1]

I don't want to get dramatic but the real important news (like layoffs in an industry related to our own job e.g.) would spread without the big news sources and most of the rest is the same every day anyway.

You miss the point. Yes, like old times, the *news* will spread, by various methods. However, what was lacking then, and what would be lacking without big news media, is credibility. We, in general, trust that the NY Times or Washington Post is telling the truth. We trusted Dan Rather, and when we found the story was false he was forced to resign. That's how important credibility is to big media. If you can't trust the reporter, then who's going to listen?

Without big media, we'd be forced to get our news from "Jim Bob's Worldy News and Used Fishing Supply". Is he credible? Perhaps. Trustworthy? Maybe, but only if you really know him. And since most readers wouldn't personally know him, people would be skeptical with anything he posted. Which is the case for almost every blog and personal webite out there, you really don't know where they get their info and how reliable they are with checking facts.

Re:How can we live without news???

[thepotoo]

See, the problem with that is this: Yes, news can travel without newspapers, but it does so much more slowly. Even with the Internet, it's still going to take days for news to get around. Plus, you can't really trust word of mouth to be acurate (just look at slashdot...). I'm not trolling here: I really think that we can't trust word of mouth to spread information as quickly and reliably as newspapers.

Re:How can we live without news???

[1u3hr]

What would we do if we wouldn't know all the important news in today's papers? What would we do if we wouldn't know how many people were bombed in Israel

I was under the impression that the great majority of Americans, and probably many other countries, get most of their news from TV. That's what's killing newspapers, not online competition.

Personally, I think TV news is a waste of time. I used to read a daily newspaper when I commuted, now I work from home mostly, I only buy the paper on Sundays. I get most of my news from the radio -- far more reliable and up to the minute than TV news, lots of anlysis if you want, especially if you get BBC World via shortwave, relay or online. I catch a news documentary on TV about once a week (mostly BBC again, sometimes PBS.)

Re:How can we live without news???

[yotto]

Which is the case for almost every blog and personal webite out there, you really don't know where they get their info and how reliable they are with checking facts.

I fail to see why this is bad. If you can't trust people to force-feed you facts, maybe you'll start to question people like Rush, Drudge, and Stern when they start telling the "news"

and why should it not be for charge?

[the_2nd_coming]

I pay for my news paper every morning. if I read more online news paper (if they were less annoying I would) I see no problem of having to pay for that content.

certainly, I expect to pay less for the on-line version, but why should the content be free?

Re:and why should it not be for charge?

[Xiaran]

certainly, I expect to pay less for the on-line version, but why should the content be free?

Why shouldnt it? Why should anything be anything? One of the things about profitable business models, is that really only have to succeed in one thing. Being a profitable business. If the online papers dont make money with free content. Fine they change their model or stop publishing. One of the reasons Im not a billionare is cause Ive yet to think up the "Business plan that will make Xiaran a billionare". I knew I was making a mistake somewhere.

Unfortunately

[delta_avi_delta]

this seems to be one of those rare cases when Ireland got there ahead of the US. It's been many years now since either of the country's two most prominent broadsheets offered all their content online for free. Indeed my favoured daily started a subscription service so long ago, that the offer of a webmail account with your subscription was tempting.

Now I get my news from google and the bbc.

Re:Unfortunately

[cafard]

Indeed. That's the reason why i switched from the Irish Times to the Irish Independant. I usually read news online on weekdays and buy the paper edition on the weekend. The Independant having the courtesy of providing me free news on the web (yeah, still requires a free registration), i definitely prefer to buy *their* paper when i go for the physical media. Here's one lost reader of the Times thanks to their charging on the web...

Same here in Spain

[Anonymous Coward]

We've seen this here too. Two years ago there was no one of them. Now there are three free newspapers (in Valencia, Spain).
They are short and therefore only have the main news but that's enough for most people. In fact the traditional paid newspapers don't like these ones at all.

It's called economics.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Interestingly, the Times now has more online readers than print readers."

Which simply implies an elastic demand curve. The more elastic, the more readers you will get with every $0.01 you decrement your price. Make it free, and obviously you will get a lot of readers.

The vast majority of those readers would not buy the newspaper if it was made subscription-only. They would simply move on to other free news sites. In fact, contrary to the Times supposition, major newspapers have been *forced* to make their news freely available online to compete with other major news papers that have done the same. It's not just about making money (although I imagine ad revenue is pretty good) it's about market exposure and their news reputation.

Why do you think Google keeps Google News even though they don't make any money out of it?

Re:It's called economics.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Interestingly, the Times now has more online readers than print readers."

I would like to query the data that this statement is made from.

Registered readers != Online readers.

NYT is often on the front page of /. and Slashbots in their droves flock to the site to read the article, forced to create an account they may never use again. This does not imply they are regular readers, nor does it imply that they would be affecting the dead tree figures if they didn't read online. This could be another skewed statistic a la the CD sales and RIAA.

small survey

[justforaday]

Let's take a small survey and find out:

a) Which do people prefer to read while sitting at their desk in the office -- paper version or online?
b) Which do people prefer to read during their daily commute -- paper version or online?

I know what my answer is to both, and they're both different...

NYT just bought into Boston Metro, a free paper

[Khopesh]

That's odd; the New York Times just bought half of the Boston Metro, a freely distributed paper.

Re:NYT just bought into Boston Metro, a free paper

[Procrastin8er]

It won't be free for long.

Re:NYT just bought into Boston Metro, a free paper

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. They'll charge for it, and create competition with the Bostom Globe, which they _own_.

I Stopped Reading Salon.com

[jac1962]

I stopped reading Salon.com when they began charging for "premium" content.

But then Salon's "premium" content consists mainly of self-appointed elitists sneering at anything good and true in the world, so it wasn't much of a loss.

Re:I Stopped Reading Salon.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I am confused as to why you were reading it before. Anyways, they have a Day Pass (watch one ad and get in free to all content for a day). You can use the day pass every day (just like Jeff Gannon and the White House press conferences). So you don't actually have to pay.

Re:I Stopped Reading Salon.com

[Jeremy Erwin]

Salon was originally conceived as a website for discussing books. Gradually, they became more overtly political. Muckrakers and political columnists may been cheaper to hire than well known authors, and in any case, attracted a more loyal subscription base.

Salon used to feature some conservative writers-- but gradually, their subscription base started to get annoyed. "Why am I paying good money to be insulted by David Horowitz?" And so, Horowitz was replaced by a series of columns that did the dirty work of sifting through slimy, filthy conservative "intelligencia" to present links to representative rightist authors.

Doesn't look that way to this DC resident

[sisifo]

Revenues from: publicity and ... influence...

Waste of a tree? I think not...

[arcite]

I'm not too sure about allure, but if you are anything like the common spy (or covert operative, black-op...ect), reading a newspaper is a great disguise.

Tip: For added camouflage, poke little 'eye' holes through one side and be rendered practically invisible!

Re:Waste of a tree? I think not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Super Secret Tip: [level 4 clearance required] Make sure the newspaper is right-side-up.

Re:Waste of a tree? I think not...

[Gizzmonic]

For some reason your post reminded me of this famed Slashdot missive. Warning to prudes, the link describes adult situations.

Pioneers Take the Arrows

[SoupIsGood Food]

Sure, if you're the Wall Street Journal. Otherwise, for general news, you're competing against a hundred thousand other news organs. I'm sure they'd all be better off going to a paid subscription model. The problem is, who goes first? That lucky pioneer will see their online subscriber base worse than decimated, and the return on the ad revenue of their advertisers shrink to negligibility, leading to advertiser defections.

So, to the first paper who takes that bold step towards pay-only, good luck. You're gonna need a lot of it...

SoupIsGood Food

someone tell that to the Boston Globe

[SuperBanana]

Today, however, The New York Times (free registration required; how ironic!) is running an article that questions the long term viability of that business model.

Pretty funny, considering the Boston Globe (which is owned by the group that owns the Times) just bought The Metro, a free newspaper distributed on the MBTA (aka the T) public transit system.

The newspapers hurt themselves

[duffbeer703]

The newspapers adopt an Oracle-like pricing model for advertisers (since billions of people CAN see your ad online, we'll charge you $$$ for it to appear there) which hurts them. Their real problem is that newspaper management are old-school newpaper guys who think in terms of the circulation of folded 11x19 sheets.

That's BS. Papers are advertising-delivery mechanisms, always have been.

If the papers actually thought about finding ways of putting their "real" paper advertisements (ie. NOT click-thrus) in the online edition, they'd have more effective advertising.

Alot of people actually pay for papers just for the ads. I often buy the Sunday paper just for the supermarket flyers and department store ads.

Re:The newspapers hurt themselves

[prockcore]

That's BS. Papers are advertising-delivery mechanisms, always have been.


Yup. For pretty much every newspaper in the country, advertising revenue outpaces subscription revenue by a fairly large margin.

Re:The newspapers hurt themselves

[mysticgoat]

A lot of people actually pay for papers just for the ads. I often buy the Sunday paper just for the supermarket flyers and department store ads.

I think this is very insightful. And I think your more general point that papers are basically advertising-delivery mechanisms is also insightful.

Re:The newspapers hurt themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

I often buy the Sunday paper just for the supermarket flyers and department store ads.

You live in a strange, twisted, world.

Re:The newspapers hurt themselves

[Alsee]

Alot of people actually pay for papers just for the ads. I often buy the Sunday paper just for the supermarket flyers and department store ads.

I register on websites just for the spam.

-

I'll pay, if it's worth it

[Anita Coney]

I pay for an email account through usa.net. I pay because it's worth getting entirely spam free emails that I can check anywhere. (Although, I have to admit free gmail is pretty good too and I'm thinking about changing.)

I also pay five measly bucks to access www.weatherunderground.com each year. That's works out to about a penny a day. Certainly worth the price.

The problem with news sites is this: who wants to subscribe to only one? Sure, the far right would sign up to foxnews.com and be done with it. But the vast majority of people want news from a variety of sources to get a balance. I just wouldn't want to pay to get only one source nor would I want to pay a lot to get balance.

Pay to remove the ad

[AwaxSlashdot]

When I realized I was reading the online version of LeMonde on a daily basis, I switched to the subscriber mode, just to be honest : 5E/month isn't that expensive and I DO read the paper.
When subscribing, I got rid of almost all the ads and got a account with 5 archived articles a month (older than 1 month, which you normally have to pay to access), with a upper limit of 25 articles.

I am very happy with this.

Re:Pay to remove the ad

[Anonymous Coward]

pay - that's what adblock is for - I never see ads on webpages unless i WANT to see them. Whatever adblock does not get an entry to my hosts file with the offending domain redirected to localhost does the same. I don't even see ads on chat clients I may use from time to time by using hosts entries.

You care about money? Better think about quality!

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it help to have a huge set of newspapers that offer articles for free ... if all the articles would be fair and balanced only?

At this point in time the US citizens should be more worried the content of their news sources. If you live in '1984' - you will not care any more wether you have to pay or if 'the news' comes for free. And that is the direction you are heading ...

Subscription clearninghouse model.

[frostman]

I read a lot of magazines and newspapers online. When I'm in the US I buy most of them in paper form (including the NYT every day) but I'm in Europe most of the time and the online versions are the only reasonably fresh way to get the content I want.

I actually have paid for an online subscription to the New York Review of Books but it was a bit pricey.

What I would like to see is one place where I could pay a single price and select several online content sites to subscribe to. Even if each one has a separate price, I still want one place to handle the subscriptions. I think the hassle barrier is higher than any (reasonable) price barrier. I should have one account that gives me access to several journals.

I would happily pay US$50/year for combined unlimited access to the NYT, the NYRB, the New Yorker, and Artnet Magazine. (Most of that content is currently free.) But I'm not going to bother with four separate subscriptions.

And I really don't think a micropayment or other per-article payment scheme will ever work. The fact that Fark makes money should be a pretty strong hint (and they're not even selling content per se, just better access to their site).

Slightly off-topic aside: if we all use Firefox now, why the continuous grumbling about the NYT Free Reg Req? Whenever the cookie expires on my completely non-personal account, the Fox just logs me back in.

Didn't The Onion go free?

[British]

The Onion is now freely distributed. While I never saw it in stores much, wasn't it a pay-paper a few years ago? Now it's circulated everywhere in the twin cities.

It started around the time The Onion's website got more ad-riddled.

Re:Didn't The Onion go free?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Onion has always been free (so far as I know). I started reading it in summer 1993 in Madison, Wisconsin. They were really funny when they had no readership.

It's happening already

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as "AC" to avoid karma whoring...

The local papers here ... http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/ are going to turn paid in a few days time. Go figure.

confilct of interest

[sthibault]

Don't you guys see the contradiction in this article? Thier subscriptions are down, thier free readership is up, and they are writing an article about how free news won't work. Doesn't this sound like they are primeing thier online readers for some kind of subscription fee down the road?

Free News

[simpl3x]

It should work like the Economist.com. Most material is free excepting the business intelligence (Oxymoron? You decide.), but everything else is available for viewing. Like /. most newspapers could market timeliness, and make everything else available without a subscription.

Re:Free News

[R.Caley]

It should work like the Economist.com. Most material is free[...]

No, most of The Economist stuff isn't free, except to subscribers to the paper version. I'm not sure where the cutoff is any more, but it was high enough up that it prompted me to actually hunt out an envelope and authourise myself at some point.

Interestingly they run the oposite model to the one you propose, it is the older stuff which you would have to pay for. They presume what they write will have value over time.

They forgot....

[gamepro]

To take in account people who buy the paper and read it online. I do since sometimes it is more convieniant to read it online then on paper and vice versa.

I Want To Pay!!!

[kmsigel]

I have been asking the NYTimes for years now to charge me for access to the online edition in exchange for eliminating the advertising. (Just like what Slashdot does.) I would be happy to pay a dollar a day (yes, $365 a year) for such a service.

The one reply I got from the NYTimes (supposedly from Martin Nisenholtz himself, the CEO of New York Times Digital at the time) seemed aimed at people who complain about ads but don't offer to pay to subscribe. I explained that I never "click through" on ads and that they would make a lot more from my visits if they charge me. He didn't seem convinced.

Oh well...I'm still reading the NYTimes on-line and I'm still annoyed by the advertising.

Advertising is the key...

[Anonymous Coward]

Newspapers, Magazines, TV... Any of these mediums make money from advertising, not from subscriptions.

Nuff said!

Nah, use your sense of humor.

[mrak018]

Here in Sov^H^H^H Russia first you hear five new anekdotes about some event, then it becomes clear to ypu that someting happend.

For instance, you encounter new jokes about Kursk submarine, then you think "What's worng with it?" and you look for news about it.

So don't be afraid about free news. Jokes are always free.

Slight elaboration on corporate ties

[xtermin8]

I assume that BBC has a British, Anglo-centric bias, but that's clear and obvious. I like the US version of the Fiancial Times, just for general news. http://news.ft.com/home/us and I find the "financial" press gives the best coverage of political, non-financial news. The problem with (American) "corporate" news is that the bias isn't made clear, and its hard to untangle sponsorships and ownerships. I think I'd be more apt to watch NBC News if they called themselves "GE Vivendi Universal News," but I don't expect that to happen soon.

Why Pay

[sxmjmae]

With all the free internet news sites why bother to pay.
When our local paper went start the internet version they did for free for 3 month then started charging.
I have a regular subscription to the paper but that did not entitle me to the on-line version. I had to pay an extra $5 a month for it. If I just wanted the on-line version I would have to pay $10 a month.
My current subscription to the local paper is about $22 a month.

It really ticked me off the I am a paying subscriber and I would have to pay extra to view the same paper on-line.

I figure that if I pay for a regular subscription I should not have to pay extra just to view it on-line. Like most IT individuals I travel lots so it would have been nice to view the news paper on-line.

See any of the Canada.com on-line newpapers. Please complain to them! They do not listen to me.

Instead of going to Canada.com to get my local news I go to CBC or CTV sites. They have the exact same articales - but for free!

Resolution and breakfast

[jfengel]

The real answer for me is that it's just easier for me to eat breakfast over a $.25 newspaper than a $1,800 laptop computer. Coffee becomes less worrying.

Another answer I haven't seen mentioned in the other responses is resolution. A laptop screen runs at maybe 70 DPI; perhaps anti-aliasing runs that up to an equivalent of 90. A paper is printed at something more equivalent to 300 DPI, which makes the text a whole lot easier on the eyes.

I see this all the time in offices; people will take PDFs and print them out to read them once, because it's more comfortable. The waste of paper bugs me, but I agree that it's less pleasant to read something on the screen.

With Firefox I'll generally zoom the text up, but then fairly little of it fits on the screen at once and I'm constantly scrolling.

Pictures, on the other hand, are generally somewhat nicer on the screen. I'm not certain there are any more pixels, since the newspaper at least has the option of printing them very large, but the newspaper's 72 DPI screen and lack of color most of the time give an edge to the monitor over the paper.

NYT's Announcement?

[FJCsar]

Take a particular look at this quote from the article:

"The New York Times on the Web, which is owned by The New York Times Company, has been considering charging for years and is expected to make an announcement soon about its plans."

Is this story anything more than a trial balloon to see how the Web community might react to a pay-for-use system?

It's all going according to plan

[PHAEDRU5]

See this: http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

If people want free, they'll get it...

[MatrixCubed]

One thing I've gleaned from years of webbernetting, is that if people *really* want something free, they'll get it for free. Whether it comes down to complaining enough to get news vendors to return their 'product' to a free model (less likely) or moving on to a free source (more likely), there's *always* a free alternative.

Interesting Business Model

[CrazyTalk]

According to the article,

"A big part of the motivation for newspapers to charge for their online content is not the revenue it will generate, but the revenue it will save"

So, in essesence, they are charging so people DON'T use their website (and instead buy the paper), instead of the other way around - brilliant!

it will survive

[PureCreditor]

even if the companies start charging for news, others will be able to duplicate the same content on their blog sites, thus nullifying the model. also, if only *one* single major news source continues free RSS feeds, the ones who charge will loose readership (unless they're significantly more credible than others, say, A.P.)

Sites can charge for *premium* content, like special features. but for regular headline news, free will be the way to go for quite some time to come

Re:it will survive

[poot_rootbeer]

even if the companies start charging for news, others will be able to duplicate the same content on their blog sites

I dunno. I'm about as avid a fan of Citizens' Media--er, blogs--as they come, but the truth is that there's not all that much original reporting coming out of them right now.

Five out of ten newsblog posts consist of a link to a story hosted by a mainstream media site, and then the blogger's commentary on it. (Of the remaining five, three are links to other blogs that link to MSM stories.) If the MSM sites all conspired to switch to a pay model and shut out nonsubscribers, blogs would find themselves either cut-and-pasting stories from the MSM (in violation of copyright), or paraphrasing stories reported elsewhere (leading to all kinds of telephone-game-style misinterpretations and misrepresentations).

But as I mentioned, to do this would required all mainstream media outlets to conspire together, and I don't think that's likely to happen (at least not until Rupert Murdoch and ClearChannel are finished buying everything else).

the ones who charge will loose readership

AAAAARGH! NO!!! WRONG WRONG WRONG

Extend the paper model

[Refried Beans]

Since the NYT already has everyone register they could try this model:

1. Allow everyone to read the headlines and first paragraph of all articles for free.
2. Sell "subscriptions" as they normally do for paper distribution, but for n days worth of news.
3. Allow the user to select the days that they will pay for the paper. Once they look over the headlines they can either go away or add that day's news to their subscription. Then they can go back and read that day's news as long as their account remains open.

Blogs versus newspaper webcast

[rayzap]

One of our clients recently did a webcast about the impact of blogs on newspapers. The event even had a moderated audience blog. Very mixed results but was seen by a large audience. Windows Media required for the webcast stream and slide show but an MP# can be downloaded (no slides tho). http://www.mediacenter.org/webcast/march/2005/?FLA SH7=1/

Social link propagation is also a problem

[TheophileEscargot]

If I see a really interesting article, I'll probably want my friends to see it too; either by emailing it or blogging about it.

A subscription-only site has less value to me since I can't spread the news around. Even if I subscribe to a micropayments scheme, my friends probably don't.

If you close content off from the public, you reduce the value of that content. A subscription site might have great content, but most people will never know about it because no-one else is linking too it.

Paying to be lied to...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough that you can't get away from media, since it's shoved down your throat (for free) constantly. We also know that the media is a conglomerate of organizations that do much less than tell you the real story.

Are we honestly considering paying money for the priviledge of being lied to? Would that be considered the ultimate victory for the politicians -- an entire culture so indoctrinated in the media of the world that, not only do they see no issue with being shovelled a constant stream of half truths and outright lies, but are willing to shell out money to ensure that such crap continues indefinately?

<tinfoil hat>
If you want a freaky experience, read (or re-read) Orwell's 1984. No longer is a twisted view of the future. The underlying context of the book is almost a documentary on modern life rather than some freak's fantasy.
</tinfoil hat>

Re:Paying to be lied to...

[Anonymous Coward]

Take off your hat. 1984 was about the time it was written in. Things have only gotten worse. We aren't closer to 1984. We're further from it -- on the wrong side.

Fit to Print

[Doc Ruby]

Kick it off with "free reg required to read article about the death of free papers". Little ironies about "news free content" in their free news content. Underwriting it all: corporate sponsored press releases, posing as news, which must get the maximum consumption - regardless of whether the news reporting is a profit center, or worthwhile expense. Maybe the Times is just gearing up to get us all to pay for the lies in their Web edition. That practice seems to create the impression that their info is worth something.

I beg to differ. We'd be slit up a treat.

[crovira]

News is spread by media on their way to making a buck. That's why the range of stories is so poor.

As for layoffs in an industry related to your job; while I have no doubt a pink slip would alert you to the fact after the fact; you would never know why, apart from the usual corporate brown nosing self-serving lies crying poverty and a depressed market while you CEO makes more than your entire town of butt-fuck, Arkansas.

Actually, there are reasons why your way of life looks like its dying. It was never tenable in the first place and people like Henry Ford and Robert Moses ignored the information and led you down the suburban garden path. And you would never know why if it wasn't for your better documentary film makers until it was to late to do anything pro-active to salvage your ass.

Defensive behavior

[Dikeman]

"A big part of the motivation for newspapers to charge for their online content is not the revenue it will generate, but the revenue it will save, by slowing the erosion of their print subscriptions"

This is typical for the way mastodonts think. They consider internet as harmful. this kind of defensive behavior is in many ways the same record companies suffer from in respect to online music.

If I was CEO of a newspaper i wouldn't be to afraid of erosion. People will probably always like it better to read text from paper. How nice it is to read a paper in the sun, on a terrace somewhere in the city, enjoying a cup of coffee.

In turn for the little erosion there may be, I get tons of new opportunities to create more revenue.

I can give my readers a broad range of services that bring them back to my site on a daily basis. I can tell what they like and what they don't like, based on website statistics, and change strategy accorcingly. (Try that with a print edition!)
I can turn my paper into more of a community like slashdot, where my readers submit news.
The editors can make use of the online discussions to get a feel of what's going on.
Cross selling and up selling opportunities.
Etc. etc. etc.

Think offensive, not defensive

There's no such thing as free registration

[Anonymous Coward]

No, news will always be available on the web. Maybe the traditional newspapers won't, but that's their choice.

Besides, it's not free if you have to register. You always pay by having to deal with junk mail after you register (unless you lie).

The only thing that worries me is that courts are bent on considering blogs not eligible for protection under the 1st Amendment (at the same time as they think blogs should be regulated like the rest of the press during political campaigns).

So it will get to a point that only paid newspapers can do any reporting that matters, because the small fish would be bullied all too easily.

I hope it doesn't get to that.

Free registration still cost you!

[UberLeo]

Once you register they monitor and advertise to what you are intersted. Thank (insert almighty being here) that we have programs like http://www.bugmenot.com/. Does anyone know of any other software that can be used to bypass BS free registration sites?

Re:Free registration still cost you!

[FuturePastNow]

For news sites, you can usually also use RefSpoof for Mozilla/Firefox. Set "http://news.google.com" as your fake referrer, since most news sites bypass registration on pages linked from Google News.

For non-news registration sites, like forums, you'd probably be better off with a free email address you don't care about.

What is news?

[bkruiser]

NEWS is the collection of interesting relevant information that is out of the ordinary for any given person. Why do we have people "re-writing" the news? Usually there are sources that already exist electronically. Bus accident... police reports, hospital admissions, fire reports. Why not simply tag those items together so that people have facts, and have an associated blog so the witnesses or others can get first hand info out. This isn't the pretty version however it does seem a bit dated to get all of our news filtered for us. /. is an excellent example of a move to this type of news, but it is just the beginning.

From Buffy: (Well, Giles actually)

[Ironsides]

Ms Calendar: Honestly, what is it about them that bothers you so much?

Giles: The smell.

Ms Calendar: Computers don't smell, Rupert.

Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell. Musty and, and, and, and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, is, it ... it has no texture, no context. It's there and then it's gone. If it's to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible, it should be, um... smelly.

Ms Calendar: Well! You really are an old-fashioned boy, aren't you?

This explain anything? That said, there really is something about having an acutal piece of paper in your hands. Maybe if electronic paper ever gets developed enought that might help.

Re:From Buffy: (Well, Giles actually)

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to kill what could have been an interesting thread. You're one of those guys who laughs at his own jokes, aren't you?

"Paper" News

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a free weekly newspaper (ad supported). There is a place for us in the market. Perhaps corporate newspapers will eventually fail to be available, but alternative presses will be glad to pick up the slack (Soon, we hope to have pdfs available for download, but do not yet).

Public vs private?

[Netsensei]

What about public news providers like the BBC? It's the taxpayer who's paying for the uppance of the on line stuff. I don't see how I should pay extra through some sort of premium membership for something I'm already paying with my taxes.

Anyway, I just got the following idea: why not a ffplugin that sends seperate http request to every ad on a page that matches ads in a whitelist? The content itself should not be rendered on screen but rather be dropped by the browser. Would that count as a 'click' on an ad? As a 'not programmer' I'm just trying to make an educated guess here...

Free dead-tree newspapers

[Per Abrahamsen]

In Copehangen (and I believe many other European cities), free print papers have recently become very popular. When you take the train or bus to or from work (more common than using a private car), you grap one of the two free newspapers. They have content for about 20 minutes, which is what such a ride typically takes. They mostly reprint stuff from the news agencies, with very little original content.

Personally, I'm very fond of them. I don't have the time to read a conventional newspaper every day. I read a weekly paper to get some perspective, but don't need that on a daily basis.

Psychic self-defence! Block Ads!

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a reasonable case not to code, sell or distribute ad-blockers. But not using one youself is like stuffing yourself with junk-food every day to help the economy. Submitting yourself to that crap isn't going to help anyone, and the Interent isn't going to die without it.

Re:Not biased?

[Phillip2]

>I assure you the BBC is biased.

I am not sure that "unbiased" in a possibility. Any reporting always puts a slant on things.

>Most news in the U.S. skews to the left.

I am not sure that "most" is that meaningful, but it depends on where you compare to. My experience on US news is that it is fairly right wing. But this, in turn, is just reflective of US society, which is to the right on my own country (the UK). However, most of the national media outlets are on the coasts, which tend to be the most left wing parts of the US. So compared to the US population as a whole, it probably is slightly left slanted.

Incidentally, the Marxist assumption would not be that "owned by someone means conservative". It would be that because a news source is owned by someone, it will generally operate to the benefit of the owner, rather than society at large, whether that is conservative or otherwise. This is, I think, probably fair. The BBC has it's bias as well, but at least this is different from the prevailing news media, which is no bad thing.

Phil

Why all the models suck

[G4from128k]

I think all the model suck in some way so that no single model will ever dominate.

1. Ad-Supported Model: Consumers get the content for free as long as they are willing to watch & click-through enough ads. Sucks because people hate/block/avoid ads (insufficient revenues), although Google might make this work.
2. BBC Model: An annual government tax on PCs is used to fund a quasi-independent news gathering organization. Sucks because it adds a tax, will never happen in the U.S. (due to freedom of the press and government non-compete issues), but it could happen in the UK.
3. a la Carte Model: Every content creator charges their own subcription. Sucks if you want to read more than one source.
4. Flat-Rate Integrator Model: A subscriber pays a monthly subscription for all the news/content aggregated by a given company (AOL, Yahoo, Google?). Sucks because snooty brand-conscious content providers (NYT, WSJ, etc.) will never join an aggregator -- they will prefer to force people to pay separate subscriptions for separate content sources.
5. Micopayment Model: A subscriber pays-per-view, the charge showing up on their monthly ISP/cellphone/credit card bill. Sucks because the cost of admin and dealing with disputed charges wipes out most of the revenues. Sucks because people hate being nickled and dimed to death.

I guess we will see which sucky model gets adopted. I suspect they all will with ad-supported and a la carte being more common than the others.

Re:Why all the models suck

[swv3752]

I don't see what the big deal is. The print version of news papers is an ad supported model. The physical cost of the paper barely supports the printing and distribution. They just need to get local companies to buy ads on the website.

Re:Why all the models suck

[aflat362]

You are forgetting one model: the sponsorship model

This is used by public radio and TV

Businesses and individuals donate their money if they feel they are getting value out of the service.

Re:Why all the models suck

[TobascoKid]

Isn't that much the same as ad-based, just that most/all the adds come from one company?

Re:Why all the models suck

[TobascoKid]

Flat-Rate Integrator Model: A subscriber pays a monthly subscription for all the news/content aggregated by a given company (AOL, Yahoo, Google?). Sucks because snooty brand-conscious content providers (NYT, WSJ, etc.) will never join an aggregator -- they will prefer to force people to pay separate subscriptions for separate content sources.

If the aggregators took off, the snooty, brand conscious content providers may be forced to join the aggregators. If the aggregators can offer most of what the "papers" offer (ie, all the newswire stuff), at a substantially cheaper price than the newspapers, than the newspapers will probably not last as seperate subscription services.

They could offer their "added value" as an extra (though probably not that much extra) subscription service on top of the aggie's basic services. For example, imagine you would get basic Yahoo news for, say $5 a month (or if your ISP has a deal with Yahoo, then free as part of your internet connection) that gets all the wire service news, but for an extra $1 a month you get all the output of the NYT or Washington Post, etc and maybe for $5 you could get content from every paper that the aggie has.

Of course, I have doubts about how much of any of this people are actually willing to pay for - the above values are for illustrative purposes only :-).

Re:Why all the models suck

[G4from128k]

You are forgetting one model: the sponsorship model

Absolutely true, you identified another model. So:

6.Sponsorship model: People and companies donate money to worthy, non-profit content creators (e.g. NPR). Sucks because of leechs.

It's definitely another model that will be in the mix., although our local public TV stations seem to be morphing into ad-supported stations given the number of thinly veiled "sponsored-by" promos.

Re:Why all the models suck

[Alsee]

6. Fashion Model: Exclusive photos of Cindy Crawford's supermarket nip-slip! Sign up for a six-month subscription and get Paris Hilton's latest sex video free! If it's not nude, it's not news!

-

Re:Why all the models suck

[danila]

Neither model will succeed in the long term, of course. The costs of creating content, costs of distributing, aggregating, hosting and filtering content will only go down. Expect most news to be just plain free in the future (may be even free as in speech - how would that be for news? :) ).

Re:Why all the models suck

[kevcol]

Many news providers use aggregate services already. Contrary to what the grandparent says, you can find lots of branded information on sources like AOL, Yahoo and Google news. With AOL, it's supported by membership fees. With Yahoo, it's branded as a part of Yahoo's free ad supported service (AP/NYT/LA Times/etc.) news in conjunction with Yahoo's brand. And with Google, which simply directs you to the original article, some subscription based news sources let you read a single article that came from a news.google.com referer, and when you want to browse within the website afterwards, they hit you up for registration.

Re:Why all the models suck

[aflat362]

Isn't that much the same as ad-based, just that most/all the adds come from one company?

no.

Subscription News v. Google.

[fazookus]

The NY Times has already dropped off the radar as far as the search engines are concerned by it's policy of taking archived materials off-line. Any paper that charges for content will also disappear from Google & Co., if not directly, by blocking them, then by alienating people who follow search links to their site and then telling them they can't see the article unless they pay up.

Maybe they can reach a compromise like some sites are doing now (by allowing one free visit) but news sites in particular need to realize that success in these internets depends on search engines.

Cartel Needed

[drooling-dog]

Whether the business model is good or not, it's going to be hard for the NYT or anyone else to charge for content unless everybody does. Otherwise, people will flock to the free content and online papers like the NYT will lose advertising revenue. So, they'd better start putting their cartel together ASAP.

Online news outlets have had problems supporting themselves with ad revenues (as the paper editions have always done), but that's largely their own fault. Nobody ever expects that readers will throw down the print edition of a newspaper and run off to respond to an ad, but that's exactly what advertisers seem to expect with Web ads. So, they've made them increasingly intrusive and obnoxious, insisting that everyone take notice regardless of interest or relevance. So, the public responded with ad-blocking. If ads in the print version slapped me in the face every time I opened the paper, I'd stop reading it (or at least wear a face mask) too...

Re:Cartel Needed

[Vitriol Angst]

Great point "drooling-dog"! I would just like to ad that there were a lot of bad assumptions about the online ad revenue model made from the get-go during the dot.com boom. News outlets cannot put a lot of money into web development and servers and expect to get paid for that. They need to spend less on the electronics than the print (which, by now, most I'm sure are). But the next step in cost cutting should be architecture-sharing. I hate to mention this, since I'm in web development, but a lot of newspapers do a lot of similiar things. You could set up the infrastructure for dozens of papers on a template run with a few web masters rather than each newspaper needing to have an in-house web development team.

What newspapers need to do is spend their money on reporters who provide unique content. Period. They can't pull the same article that 80 others are off the AP newswire and add any value in the e-era.

What newspapers need is to lower their expectations and provide better journalism.

But there is one other issue that should be addressed; namely re-linking. A lot of articles are do not provide revenue for a website because someone has made a synopsis elsewhere that is more or less the article. There ought to be a standard of no more than a certain number of words being allowed in a synopsis. I think it is a terrible burden on journalists who provide unique content to have another web site merely report; "Jornalist X at The YZ Times reported..."

But I think that news cartels will probably follow the model of Clear Channel on the radio. More's the shame. Also, I think that media companies are going to go after Blog sites in the courtroom if they get too successful. Possibly trying to make them liable for what gets posted (just use your imagination). This, of course will backfire, but not at first.

How ironic?

[sharkey]

Not as ironic as the Times article (free registration req'd) about how insidious web pages with so-called "free" registration req'd really are, and how you should be distrustful of such.

ComputorEdge

[TooLazyToLogon]

One of the best online computer magazines is not only free online, but so is the hard copy. It is supported by advertisement, but in the online version you really have to look for the ads. In fact if I'm going to make a computer related purchase, it is easier to pick up a hard copy and browse the advertisements there. They have been around since the '80s in just about the same form. Of course the online version has gone through some changes since the advent of the web.

Free is not always best

[manganese4]

The downside with a free business model is that if anyone decides to pump money into something working on small margins, they can essentially control the content with little effort. This is not to say this does not happen with the current pay service but it takes a significant larger sum of money which ensures some stability in the content of any given news instrument. A purely free service could easily swing in terms of content and message from month to month and inspire little confidence in its reliability.

Standard NYT fud

[RhettLivingston]

This article isn't reporting news, its trying to make it. The NYT's model is the one that is dated. Good riddance.

The Economist

[Anonymovs Coward]

It should work like the Economist.com. Most material is free excepting the business intelligence

No, most material there is not free. Perhaps the front page looks that way, but try clicking on "current issue".

But you're right, they have a terrific business model. They got me hooked with the free stuff and eventually I got tired of not being able to read the rest and subscribed. And I'm not alone: they recently hit the million subscriber mark.

I certainly wouldn't subscribe to the NYT if it tried that stunt, but I'm sure there are people who would. In fact, there may be people who already do, to read the archives.

Umm, no?

[Jugalator]

Is the era of free news content about to end?

No, I don't think so.

Ask me again when we're starting to see signs of it actually happening?

In other news, Google News recently updated their free metanews engine.

Re:Umm, no?

[dick johnson]

Well, the way I see it, Google News is sort of dependent on these "Free" news sources.

I find it funny to hear folks talk about the demise of the old media and the rise of the new. Folks often point to Google News as an example of how it will all be in the future.

There's just one little problem with that. What does Google news aggregate, if not the mainstream news outlets?

Blogs?

I really don't think so.

Can you imagine how uninformitive the web would be if every major news outlet pulled its content off the web?

What's left then for Google News to aggragate?

Yes. There are some blogs that are quite good. But most of the blogs I've seen are just rubish. The signal to noise ratio is quite poor.

What does Drudge have to blog about if all the mainstream news sources are no longer available for him to link?

Sure, he can rage about whatever he hears about. But how much less useful is his site without the links to the actual stories (links that are from traditional news sources).

I don't think this is an either or proposition. The old media and the new media are going to merge.

Blogs, aren't going to replace traditional news outlets. (They may replace the editorial and opinion pages of traditional news outlets.)

Things about the old media will change. But don't kid yourself that the web would be nearly as interesting without the contributions of these print and broadcast publications.

Wrong Model

[Anonymous Coward]

The model people should compare internet news to, is the broadcast model. In this model, everyone is falling over themselves and interrupting current programming to bring you breaking news. For free!

Yes, there's annoying ads, unles you're in the car and have the push-buttons set to different station, or NPR. But...

Some of the online news sites are broadcasters' sites, and unless they too deide to charge, you better have some really good content to take on free with per-pay. Frankly, very few print media (especially the big me-too chains) have it.

Business Model

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace magazine subscriptions with "fire this reporter" cash-drives. Fans can pony up cash on both sides of the fence.

I'd gladly toss in a couple of bucks to stop David Brooks from further polluting the public consciousness.

NYT Still Has About 1.1 Million Print Subscribers

[Vortran]

According to the article they have more-or-less had about 1.1 million print readers since 1993.

All I see is a greater circulation now that they have an extra 1.4 million online readers.

Nowhere do I see them saying they have LOST print subscribers.

The weight of assumption is too great to claim that those online readers would have otherwise bought the print version - just like assuming people who downloaded free albums from Napster would have bought the CD.

Bottom line = this is 100% additional exposure for NYT, and perhaps other papers like it.

remember bugmenot.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey - don't forget we don't need to fill out any stinking registration forms...bugmenot.com (and included in Firefox extensions).

Occasionally nyt.com catches on and deletes a registration - but a new one is always at bugmenot.

"the secret guys is to bang the rocks together"

Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

The whole idea of "micropayments" was only ever "embraced" by people who will spend an hour to save 50 cents. For most people, if they where so inclined to pay for content, a debit card works just fine (surprisingly, 99.9% of people have one of these). For those that do not have a debit card, there is always the public library (not just for bums to sleep in, you know).

However, I think there is only a small segment of the population that will opt for paying to read news / content on line (non-porn content...) over the convenience of buying the so-called "dead tree" version, even if it ends up costing more in the end. And, a lot of it has to do with the same reasons that on-line documentation sucks (I always print it out in the end, and I'm certainly not the only one...).

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[fm6]

The whole idea of "micropayments" was only ever "embraced" by people who will spend an hour to save 50 cents.

No, it's embraced by people who don't want to spend $5-$20 to subscribe to a web site, just to read one or two articles occasionally.

In any case, nobody really knows who would embrace micropayments, because content providers have never really tried it. Can you name a single major online news source that has? If my favorite news sites all announced tomorrow that I'd have to pay, say, $0.005 for each article I read, I wouldn't rebel. Maybe others would, but we don't really know until somebody tries it. And nobody has.

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

No, it's embraced by people who don't want to spend $5-$20 to subscribe to a web site, just to read one or two articles occasionally.

Buy the hard copy, than. What's the issue? I don't tell Sara Lee to change their entire production line just because I think they should put less of ingredient X in their product, I buy it or I don't.

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[fm6]

Buy the hard copy, than.

Most of the stuff I read online would be expensive and inconvenient to get in hard copy, if I could get it at all. Do they sell the L.A. Times, the Manchester Guardian, and Toronto Glob and Mail on your street corner?

I don't tell Sara Lee to change their entire production line just because I think they should put less of ingredient X in their product, I buy it or I don't.

This isn't about the product, it's about how they go about selling it. If I wanted to eat frozen pound cake (yuck!) and Sara Lee couldn't figure out how to make a profit selling it to me and I knew a distribution model that might make me a profitable customer, why shouldn't I speak up?

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Most of the stuff I read online would be expensive and inconvenient to get in hard copy, if I could get it at all.

And you expect it for free. Why is that?

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[fm6]

You seem to have short-term memory issues.

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I had no regular employment during this period. I subsisted on a variety of part-time and seasonal jobs

Yes, I would like fries with that. Thanks.

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[fm6]

So, were you born an asshole, or did you have to study?

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

It took a great deal of time, a lot of late nights with the books. While I was studying to be an asshole, all my friends where out partying. But my efforts paid off, they all graduated with C's and B's, but I was on the Dean's List. Can I say I regret it? Not at all. It got me to where I am. I spend a month of every year in the Bahamas or Asia fucking beautiful women who would never touch me in real life, and when I fly home First Class, and am done with my stewardess, I have my art. I will grow old smoking Cubans and drinking fine brandy, as the Ones and Zeros float through my head and compact into the next million dollar idea. And you? How are YOU?

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[fm6]

Very impressive. Which assholes do you model yourself upon? Or do you consider yourself unique?

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

I'm not an asshole.

I am opinionated. But I'm not an asshole.

I believe in my opinions, I think thay are corrct ideas. But that's just me.

I'm an Italian / Jewish opinionated asshole. That's me.

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[fm6]

You're an asshole if you're so anxious to pick an argument, you can't even keep track of what you're arguing about. As you did when you got from here to here. Your tendency to phrase all arguments as insults doesn't quite help either.

Being opinionated is not quite the same thing. You can feel strongly about your opinions, and still show respect for people who disagree with you. Not to mention actually listening to what they say.

Re:Indeed: Payment IS the problem...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Thanks for you interst. I am a god person. I am not a bad person. I consider you coments valuble.

Call me paranoid.....

[CBrooks]

NYT has given content away on the web for free pretty much since the inception of the web. The number of on-line subscribers surpasses the dead-tree subscribers and they can't come up with a profit model for this. They know the on-line base will leave in droves if they go to a fee-based or premium content model (or at least live in fear of this) as long as there are other options for news. Solution to this no-win scenario: political. Maybe an "anti-dumping" of news law....You know: "you're dumping news on the web for free and it's undermining our venerable (lap-dog) news industry cuz we know it costs $ to provide news and you can't be giving it away as that's commie-nism (or even worse socialism) and that ain't how capitolosem works you free-loading, IP stealing, P2P supporting, commie bastids"

maybe they could save more money...

[JustNiz]

and also save trees by stop printing those hundreds of free papers that get forced on us.

I don't even read them, they go straight from my mailbox and driveway into the dumpster.

Choice quote from the article - "Tivo of the Web"

[TobascoKid]

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said of relying on advertising as the sole revenue stream: "My main concern is that, however we distribute our work, we have to generate the money to pay for it. The advertising model looks appealing now, but do we want our future to depend on that single source of revenue? What happens if advertising goes flat? What happens when somebody develops software to filter out advertising - TiVo for the Web?"

I guess he hasn't heard of adblock then :-)

Thinking about it, maybe adblock and it's ilk could be modified to download the ad in the background but still not display it - that way the advertisers think people are looking at the ads and everybody would be happy.

Re:Not biased?

[geoffrobinson]

What I've generally noticed is that it would effect reporting about the going-ons with the parent company, not about general things. But even Time reported on the AOL-Time Warner mess.

EPIC 2014

[redune45]

I'm surprized that no one has mentioned this

http://www.broom.org/epic/

This is a flash movie made by a news analysis company. In it, they describe many web/world changing events, including the New York Times taking their content off of the web.

The Cost Is For Delivery

[theManInTheYellowHat]

I used to have a paper route as I am sure that some you did. Even back then (1975) my manager told me that the cost of the paper to the subscribers was for the delivery of the paper not the content. The content is paid for by the advertizers.

So how much doesit cost to deliver the paper via the web? Surely it is cheaper than driving stacks of them to the local paperchild orsending via mail.

Also it must be way cheaper to maintain a server room than a paper press.

Should it be free? Do they want me to read their ads? That is what it is all about.

free archives

[Anonymous Coward]

If they want to charge for access (or require registration) it's their right to do so.

I would request that they make the archives available for free (say after one or two weeks). There's a lot less demand on it, and it will give eye balls to the site. The BBC is wonderful for this: links even from five years ago still work. (The URIs are actually sane as well!).

If they charge, it will help free competition

[Cryofan]

If the big online print media outlets band together and start charging for access, that would give an opening to small time Internet upstarts, which would likely just be meatspace extensions of major forums and blogs, like slashdot, fark, democraticunderground, freerepublic, etc. They would pay indie reporters to do stories by showing up at local events with their digital cameras. They could not pay much, but they could pay SOME small fee. This would be paid out of ad revenue generated from the sites.

1.4 million online readers divided by...

[DanCentury]

I personally have signed up for a new New York Times account about ten times over as many years. I don't read their web site regularly; I only access it when Slashdot, or another site, links to their articles. Then I try to remember a username/password. After that fails, I typically reregister or use Bug Me Not.

I bet at least 50% of their 1.4 million online readers are duplicate accounts.

The curse of measurement

[G4from128k]

I don't see what the big deal is. The print version of news papers is an ad supported model. The physical cost of the paper barely supports the printing and distribution. They just need to get local companies to buy ads on the website.

Very good point, the cost structure of newspapers would be much better without all that bulky paper, printing, and distribution. Ad-supported hardcopy works, in part, because newspaper sales people can convince businesses that it works without any inconvenient data to show otherwise.

The best feature of online advertising is that you can measure the response via click-throughs, cookies, and tracking unique visitors. The worst feature of online advertising is that advertisers can measure the response and discover that its not working. Sure, ad-supported can work online, but only as long as ad-blockers don't become too popular or people stop clicking-through and buying from online advertisers.

Financial press

[Stone Pony]

Interestingly, you used to hear of many left-wing political figures who said that they relied on the Financial Times for their political news precisely because of the paper's position that the business of making money was far too serious to allow their news coverage to be tainted by political bias.

Bussiness model?

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Not everything is about money. There are many news sites that are independent, not-for-profit, not managed by corporations, that has well educated editors, that posts quality, original, interesting, never duplicated content, like, for example, this slash .... oh ... nevermind.

MOD PARENT UP !

[mirko]

+1 Funny: He's a subscriber so he contradicts himself :)

Re:MOD PARENT UP !

[lucifuge31337]

Actually..I just didn't explain fully. I don't have anything against subscriptions. I waste time on /. daily, so of course I'd subscribe. But I read an NYT article about once a month if that....I don't want a subscription in that case, so I'd like the option for a micropayment (if I were forced to pay in some form for the content).

Name any other content provider that might be linked to in a forum post or mailing list....one that the bulk of the users may not necessarily use on a regular basis, but want to read this particular article/content. That's where a (near) universally accepted micropayment system really starts to make sense.

Not quite true

[Mr 44]

While what you are saying about the failure of online advertising was true a few years ago, I think the definite trend is towards advertising to build awareness, not just clikc-throughs.

You see this in the flash "over-page" ads (for things like cars or Absolut), where the flash plays on top the surrounding content. Also, there are more and more "interstitial" ads (where the ads plays before showing you the content example on salon, and I would imagine that the click-through on interstitials is abysmal, since people are juust trying to get whereever they are going.

Coupons will save the printed newspaper!

[himself]

Maybe I'm out of step with many folks here, but I get the Sunday paper for the coupons.

Oh, I glance at the news pages, too -- but only because weekends are for the kids and so I miss my morning visits to news.google.com.

multiple news papers... micropayments?

[CaptainPinko]

I would never pay to rad an online newspaper. Why? Well it's not because I'm cheap but because I don't read a single newspaper. I like reading the local paper of wherever an event happens. Over the course of a year I may have read a 100 different newspaper. Most of the time I have only read one or two stories from most of them. I would not pay even $5 for the dozen or so stories I read from the NYTimes. Had micropayments taken off (and OT but this is where capitalism fails miserably.... you don't need competition but the govenernment to come in and set down some standard, any standard; it worked for getting telephone across this country it could have worked for micropayments) then this would be a diffent story. Perhaps it's time for some large third-party to set up an *international* net payment scheme. Swiss banks perhaps?

it shouldn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Free new online shouldn't end. When you buy a subscription, you're really not paying to read the news, you're paying for the paper it's printed on adn the distribution method (delivery, news stand, 7-11, etc.). The news is actually paid for by the advertisers.

The on-line medium is interesting b/c it doesn't require the purchase of goods to deliver to physically deliver it to you.

Information Wants to eb Free

[eno2001]

As long as we don't succumb to a complete fascist state where the news is controlled by the government 100% (as opposed to the 60% control the U.S. government currently holds: facts pulled out of my ass in neocon fashion ;) ) and as long as news corporations don't completely lock up all news information with "Intellecutal Property" rights, there will always be free alternatives. What are they going to do to keep word of mouth from spreading the news? What about low-tech solutions that can't be controlled by DRM? (I can just imagine "news pirates" printing off their own PDFs and dead tree versions of online news and trading theirn newz w4r3z. Sounds like something out of a Gisbon novel) Nope. There will always be free access to news in some fashion or another.

Not likely

[digitalgimpus]

There are a few differences:

1. People pay for music becuase it's original. Only 1 artist can do the song. If I perform the song... people don't like it. If the artist does it. It's great.

2. News is organization of DATA. Data will always be free. Why would I pay the NYT for data, when someone else will post it for free, and use ads to support it? The person showing the ads will gain 100% of the market. Easily gain 100% of the market. I'm not going to pay for data, since everyone can give me the same quality.

Even if they ALL went to pay methods, a few things still have weight:

People expect to be able to get news online. If it all went paid service, ISP's would make deals with news providers to ensure "free" (Included in price) news for their customers... so still free news.

News is just organization of data. It's not something people will pay for.

People pay for tangable goods, creative works, and inovation. News doesn't fit in that category.

Ohh please, pretty please?

[miffo.swe]

I would love if the big media companies went tits up and left the internet allowing new media to rise. News today is a joke, heavily biased towards corporations and governments. Finding unbiased news involves stepping off the established media channels. The media companies cant afford to be left out so they will continue to offer free news.

That said i dont think this will ever happen and subscriptions on the internet will be a wet dream and nothing more.

Re:Ohh please, pretty please?

[Anonymous Coward]

And where, tell me, would you get your news? From bloggers? Ha! Where the hell do you think their news comes from? For every original thought (little of which features actual reporting, certainly none that requires getting off your ass and leaving the keyboard) there are scores of links to either news sites or (more likely) other blogs.

This is a serious issue: Who is going to be able to afford to keep us informed down the road. People like you add nothing to the conversation.

End of Free News.....never happen!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry to tear down your funeral wagon, but nobody is going to sing a funeral dirge for free news...ever! You see, there are several things on the net that will always be free, and that is because the we netizens are a public, and like 'public's everywhere, we run the gamut of smart to 'mind challenged', from poor to filthy steeenkin rich, from left to right, etc. Just like in the real world, people will always try to sell us something in hope of some kind of return. Hucksters and hookers , drug pushers, loan sharks, pedophiles and perverts and suede shoe boys try to sell us through spam, web pages, or rented parts of web pages. Others peddle all sorts of religion the same way. Still others spew out propaganda under many cover subterfuges. All of this is free, just like on television or large dish satellite free to air programs. News is offered many times by all these sales people in order to get eyeballs to look at their wares. News will continue to be offered by these same people whether monopolists like the new-york-times like it or not. NYT is an old hand at trying to convert the free model to a fee model. 'Europe Today' under various names is another fee grabber. At first they were free. That was an effort to get people in the habit of reading them, just like a heroin pusher or crack dealer will give out free samples to hook the marks into dependance. Then came the cookies.....many many cookies.... and the ads pop up and pop under that often led to sites of questionable content if accidently clicked on. Then came the 'free registration'. I read one of NYT's 'free registration contracts' in the early days of their online publishing career; and was surprised to discover that this actually set up and account with the reader's name on it, and that it reserved the right to NYT to RETROACTIVELY CHARGE THE READERS MONEY LATER FOR READING MATERIAL THEY RECIEVED AT THE TIME THEY SIGNED UP.
That is when I banned NYT's url from my firewalls.
No, the fee model will never hold, as there is a world of hucksters of all stripes who will take advantage of a news starved public to offer their own news. Major companies may not like the kind of news they offer, and many weak minded members of the public may be quite favorably influenced by the news that then remains free. These papers, like now, would not have to tell the truth or even half of it, just their take on the half they see.....just like now. Only if NYT has its way, the public would not see there unaffordable pay by the story rag, they would only read the more tabloidy pages and make their opinions of society and politics based on what they read there instead of places like NYT. Gee, I think that a new edition by the Communist Party, or by the Al Krapp Hedda Party of Gawd, or by the womens prostitute unions would go over big.....especially the back pages where they would tell ordinary citizens how to make..............

It's Inevitable,

[pauloslash]

the NY Times will eventually go offline and become a print-only newsletter for the elite and the elderly.

Opposite Effect

[jisatsusha]

The opposite seems to be happening here. We've had a free newspaper called Metro in London for years now, which is quite popular amongst business types. And more recently, The Evening Standard has created a free version of their newspaper.

How about Today = $$, Yesterday = free?

[cellocgw]

A number of magazines do this -- give you web access to most or all of previous issues but not the one currently on newstands. Given that yesterday's newspaper (hard copy) is only useful for wrapping fish, why not charge for access to today's issue but make all else free?

Of course, there is the prisoner's-dilemma-like difficulty if one newspaper does this but the competitors give away today's news.

Not at the NYT!

[BalorTFL]

While I think you've got an interesting idea, the New York Times is actually doing the opposite; an article from today's paper, or even a few days ago is free online (with registration, admittedly). However, if you want to see something from a month or two back, you'll have to pay up.

Infotainment

[nullhero]

Watching Boston Legal last night they had a case where a school was censoring FOX News channel. This is more about Alan's closing which he states that you can't censor just FOX because all the news these days is nothing more than infotainment because they need to be profitable. Whats to stop newspapers from becoming the same thing. News should be about reporting not slanting or having a bias just to inform which is no longer happening and if it continues to be about money than why should we read them?

What about WikiNews model?

[hugesmile]

You forgot one model: Wiki News. Free to the user, contributors write the news, and you can donate to keep it alive.

1000 articles and counting!

it ends right here and now

[Anonymous Coward]

i just tried looking at http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/14/ 1613214&from=rss
and got:
Not subscriber, or not subscribed page
You can't see this story because it's scheduled in the future, where only subscribers can see it.

Either you are not a subscriber to Slashdot, or you have indicated you don't want Stories pages ad-free, or you have set your daily limit of ad-free pages to lower than the default 10. Any of these three possible issues can be resolved at your subscription page.

Re:NYT Still Has About 1.1 Million Print Subscribe

[Rob Kestler]

They may not claim it but industry wide the trend is that print readership is down and with lower circulation comes less advertising revenue. My guess is that the New York Times is not entirely exempt from this trend.

Also, my guess from the article is that the New York Times will soon be adopting a pay-version of their site. New York Times and other national dailies may be able to make this work but most papers would not.

The problem that online publications run into is that they are often trying to work under print models. Print models don't necessarily work for a multimedia environment. "Circulation" numbers are not going to help bolster revenue but better use of creative, non-intrusive advertising can. Impress upon advertisers to make their advertising something more than they would put into the paper and, for heaven's sake, don't base it on click throughs! Use impressions or some other method which more accurately shows the presence they have had. Besides, their Web site probably sucks anyway. ;-)

just the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

"Is the era of free news content about to end?"

no, the era of not having to pay for anything is about to begin.

Re:just the opposite

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon followed by the era of not being paid to do anything, then the era of living in the forests and the canyons eating bark and lizards!

online news reading is broader and shallower

[Heisenbug]

... not shallower in a negative sense, but if I spend a buck on the paper New York Times, I'll read a good portion of it. If I'm reading it online, I'll read a couple of headline articles, and a couple of articles from the Washington Post, and a couple from Slashdot, and a couple from Google News, and a couple from Metafilter ... since most of those are aggregators, I've probably just read one article each from a dozen different sources. All of that has the equivalent value to me as the dollar I spent on the Times -- less, because I can get the Times cheaper with a subscription, and it comes with all sorts of extra stuff I can use if I feel like it.

That makes transitioning business models hard, because your micro payments have to be really, really micro -- whatever article of yours I'm reading is worth a tenth, or a fiftieth, of the entire publication, and I probably don't have any particular attachment to you, so I'm not willing to maintain an ongoing account. In order to make it all work, you need a way to seamlessly charge me say two cents an article -- that means convincing a whole bunch of users to sign up for the same service, and a whole bunch of publications to sell their stuff for a low enough price to keep those users interested.

I don't know which is more improbable, but they're both pretty long shots. In the meantime, if putting well-researched breaking news online for free is too expensive, we'll be back to getting second-hand news online for free, and maybe keeping a subscription to a few particularly valuable publications.

Oh, the humanity.

Too bad we have popup blockers

[Serveert]

Popups are the most lucrative online ads coming in at around $4-$5 CPM. If they could provide popups, 1 every 24 hrs per user, they wouldn't ever have to consider charging.

And with everyone trying to block all the banners, text ads, etc etc.. basically all form of advertising, despite the fact that fewer people are willing to pay online subscription fees. Basically people need to get realistic very soon. What's it going to be?

Same out here

[EvilStein]

Knight Ridder bought out several of the free papers in this area... (Silicon Valley)

Free Newspapers

[eccles26]

The idea of someone not it the country of publishing having to pay to read that newspaper is not fair. I cannot buy the New York Times or any other overseas newspaper, so why can't the publishers make access to the papers to overseas readers free.

I am impressed.

[Anonymous Coward]

A version of Acrobat Reader for Linux that doesn't look like total shit. Probably takes a long time to load, though.

Slashdot in print???

[ebzxzpp]

What I want to know is, when will Slashdot be available in a print version? How would that work? Does one person write down a comment on a sheet of paper and pass it around, everyone else adding their own opinions?

--
john jacob jingleheimer schmidt

competition

[scharkalvin]

The on line newspapers must compete for eyeballs with TV and Radio news, local newspapers, and other on line newspapers. Also the tv stations have their own on line news. The only advantage the NYT as it that it IS the NY Times. They are one of the leading and most respected newspapers in the country. (the New York post and Daily news on the other hand are known as the best papers to wrap fish with).

BBC News

[vladrac25]

bbc news http://news.bbc.com/ provides its content via the bbc licence fee, I as a UK citizen have to pay my licence fee, and for this I get a quality news site, the bbc news site was rated 7th most used site. For every one outside of the uk they get a free site. I believe a licence fee for tv channels is unique to the uk (not a subscription fee which is different) The tv, radio and web sites are all advert free though

6. Free content Model

[captwheeler]

6. Free content Model: Competition for readers is so great that providers choose to give away content in support of other endeavors, or for the public good.

Newspapers could be replaced by blogging aggregates, or Wikinews type collaborative efforts.

Corporations already produce information about things related to their industries (although its often just marketing.) In a free (as-in-beer) press environment the incentive may be strong enough to produce unbiased information. This could help the companies in a general way, i.e. More general knowledge about the auto repair could mean less competition from makers of cheap, low quality parts. A good situation for any company that competes on merit rather then brand.

Large organizations could become more public and timely. For example the CIA publishes the World Fact Book and Universities collect information for research and publication. Churches create newsletters that don't compare to the metro 'local' section, but that could change.

A mix of these is probably what will happen (as you said,) but I think free content will become even more common then it is now.

Re:Not biased?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you please cease the "communist"/"Marxist" name-calling? Just because people do not agree that a country should be run in such a way as to favour the corporations, the military and religious fanatics does not mean that such people are (a) communists or (b) liberals. The fact that you assume that to be the case is a rather strong indictment of how skewed your own point of view is.

There will always be free alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Traditionally newspapers have always made their money through advertising. Paid subscription merely covers the cost of printing on newsprint and delivering the paper to the customer, and provides a way for the newspaper to justify advertisement pricing by counting the number of readers. With the internet, newsprint is uneccessary, the cost of delivery to the reader is much cheaper compared to the old way, and counting readers is simple and can be automated. There is NO REASON WHATSOEVER (beyond simple greed) to charge extra for this (but they will try just like banks tried to charge extra for ATM access even though it saved them money over the old way of paying tellers).

In fact, if it hurts online readership you can bet they will change their minds very quickly, because advertising is where their real money comes from, and it's based on the number of readers who view the ads. Duh! There will be plenty of news sources that realize this and will not charge extra, and therefore will be in prime position to pick up readers who drop sources who decide to levy a charge.

So JUST SAY NO! If your favorite news source wants to charge extra, go elsewhere!

Re:Not biased?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Maybe you are assuming that most news sources in America are conservative because they are owned by someone. And money means conservative."

then again maybe it's not an assumption at all. maybe it's based on observation. observation of government-controlled propaganda stations like fox and cnn, which frequently repeat government press releases verbatim as "news" and employ "reporters" who are on the payroll of the united states government.

"This is a typical Marxist assumption."

this is typical ridiculous, inflammatory right-wing ad-hominem hyperbole. the american democratic party has no marxist plank in its platform, of course, and is in fact considerably more conservative now than in recent decades.

"Most news in the U.S. skews to the left."

this is a broken right-wing record. it was true in the seventies, but it's not true any more, and it isn't going to become true no matter how often you repeat it.

"Many leftists think it is conservative because it isn't far-left communist/socialist. Well, that's correct. Most media in the U.S. isn't leftists. But that's not the same thing as unbiased."

no; again, those (on both sides of the political spectrum) who correctly identify the majority of american mass media as right-biased do so based on observation. i suggest it is your own deep and obvious right bias which makes things appear to you as they do; it is you who needs recalibration, not everybody else.

"I assure you the BBC is biased. If it is the same as your own, you probably think it is playing it straight. It isn't. That's why it's better to admit who you are. I can take news from a liberal who admits they're liberal a lot easier than from the NY Times."

it's true that the bbc is biased, but they are much closer to neutral than the vast majority of american mass media "news."

"Just b/c you disagree doesn't mean I'm a troll."

and just because you have that signature doesn't mean you aren't. welcome to my "foes" list, and have a nice day.

Free newspaper on PAPER

[dolmen.fr]

As in Paris (as well as in many European major cities), we have two FREE (as in beer) PAPER newspapers, I would say it is The START of The Free Newspaper.

Re:Free newspaper on PAPER

[dolmen.fr]

PS: they exist for about three years.

electronic paper

[Anonymous Coward]

With the advent of electronic paper, you'll be able to store the news on one scrollable sheet of paper. You can download content using your computer, or you can pay at the newsstand for them to load today's news onto your sheet.

I will get it free where I can...

[suman28]

Otherwise it is not the end of the world. In today's world where we are constantly bombared by news from various sources...it shouldn't be that hard to get news for free. There is always NPR which is nearly free.

Flat nonsense

[fm6]

Flat rate for a lot of stuff would appeal to a lot of people a whole lot more.

And your basis for that assertion is...?

Flat rate sucks for online content. It's a subscription, and subscriptions aren't worth the money unless you read a lot of the material your subscribing to. When you subscribe to a dead-tree newspaper, you tend to read a lot of articles in a lot of issues. If you're not doing that, then the subscription becomes wasteful, and it makes more sense to buy a single copy when you feel like reading that particular paper. Which is almost like a micropayment.

Online content supports a sort of grazing model, and I think that's what most online readers do. I know I do: I sort through the headlines and news summaries. I tend to follow specific writers rather than specific news sites. If I had to pay subscriptions for every site I visit, the cost would be extreme.

I used to like to read Kenneth Turan's movie reviews -- one of the few film critics I don't consider a dweeb. Can't any more, because the LA Times Calendar web site now charges $5 a month for access. A reasonable subscription fee if you read most of the site on a regular basis, but not to read just one columnist.

Re:Flat nonsense

[91degrees]

And your basis for that assertion is...?

Disneyland.

And most newspapers.

And Cable TV.

People spend a lot more money on amusement parks, newspapers, and channel packages that they do on individual fairground rides, single articles and pay per view.

You need to provide enough content for people to feel its worth it though. A $50 fee for a years' subscription is to much for most people because they're not convinced they'll get $50 worth of what they want over the course of the year.

They might be willing to pay a 50 cents for a day's access in principle, but in practice, the inconvenience of paying that much makes it unlikely.

A model that may have worked is a collaboration of sites that offer people a lot of content, even though most will only be interested in a subset. Actually switching the web over to that sort of a business model would be difficult though. There's way too much competition from free sources.

But let's assume all sites do manage to go subscription only. The LA times may not be worth that $5 a month to you, but would that and a couple of dozen other sites that you would otherwise be unable to access be wrth that much? If they could offer enough to tempt you, that would be $5 profit shared between them, which however many ways you slice it is going to be higher than the $0 the LA Times is getting from you. This is the principle of aggregation. It's a very well established business model. The problem is that nobody has worked out a way to offer enough online content in one chunk to convince people to pay.

Re:Flat nonsense

[fm6]

Disneyland.

I must be stupid. I just don't see how going to a glorified, overbranded amusement park resembles reading an article about Bolivian politics.

And most newspapers.

None of which force you to subscribe to read them. You do have to buy a whole issue at once, but that's the smallest unit that's practical in a newstand. Which is hardly true for online content.

And Cable TV.

Which is a damned monopoly. It's not a reasonable model for anything.

Re:Flat nonsense

[91degrees]

The examples I gave are typical economics examples for aggregation. Allow me to explain.

I must be stupid. I just don't see how going to a glorified, overbranded amusement park resembles reading an article about Bolivian politics.

It doesn't. It resembles a subscription. Disneyland is the typical example of this type of business model. A fixed cost for entry, and then all rides are free. People will pay more for entry to the park than they would on individual rides. They may ride more times since there's no additional cost but the extra cost of that is smaller than the increase in sales.

None of which force you to subscribe to read them. You do have to buy a whole issue at once, but that's the smallest unit that's practical in a newstand. Which is hardly true for online content.

Someone may be willing to spend 5c for the news and 10c for the sport. Someone else may be willing to pay 10c for the news and 5c for the sport. Sell news and sport separately, and you can charge 5c for each part, meaning both buyers will buy both parts (total income 20c), 10c each, neaning both buyers will buy 1 part each (total income 20c), or you can charge 15c for news and sport combined (total income 30c).

These are oversimplifications, but they illustrate the point that in many cases people are more willing to spend more money.

Re:Flat nonsense

[fm6]

Disneyland follows a very special business model. You pay big bucks to enter the "Magic Kingdom" (scary name, that) and you don't leave for hours. (Or, in the case of Disney World, days.) The only web sites that follow anything like that model are porn sites.

We can argue analogies forever. I'll say it one last time: you can't seriously claim that micropayments won't work until serious web content providers try that model. To this date, none has.

HAH!

[borgheron]

Yeah right. This "end" has been heralded several times before and it's never happened.

GJC

Re:Not biased?

[geoffrobinson]

The hard leftists (not all liberals) are socialists. And they carry Marxist assumptions which effect how they view the news media.

Re:NYT Still Has About 1.1 Million Print Subscribe

[poot_rootbeer]

this is 100% additional exposure for NYT

I wouldn't say "100% additional", myself. I'd imagine that a sizeable portion of the 1.4 million readers of the New York Times online are also people who read the print edition, and enjoy the flexibility of being able to access the content in whichever medium is more convenient. An editorial, for example, might work better on the printed page, but searching classified ads will be much easier in a dynamic web context.

Re:Not biased?

[geoffrobinson]

Cool! I have a foe!

A modest proposal: aggregate payments not content

[cbare]

I totally support websites that want to charge for content. Why? 'Cause I think ads are annoying and favor least-common-denomenator content like stupid network TV sitcoms and vacuous teeniebopper bands.

None of the currently used methods to charge for content are viable because the cost of making the transaction is too high -- either to the user (filling out forms etc) or to the seller (paying 50 cents to process a payment of 50 cents).

So far, free content and donations seems to be the best compromise. I'd love to compare Wikipedia's donations to Britannica's revenue over the past year.

So, here's a thought:

Let's say you subscribe to a payment service which issues you some kind of universal user-id. You put in your info once at the payment service's site. Each pay content site would require you to sign on with your universal user-id. Your total surfing costs would be totalled and billed to you once a quarter or so. The revenue would be divided among the content sites based on total traffic statistics for all users of the payment service.

Essentially, this amounts to aggregating payments rather than aggregating content.

The big drawback I can see is the cost of securing such a system. Anyway, I guess this is not that different than micropayments, except that the payments are aggregated to save on txn costs.

Oh well, I guess we'll just have to watch ads for crappy block-buster movies or useless James Bond cigarette-lighter-cameras or something.

nyt does have a source of revenue

[jilles]

It's called advertising. For both the paper version and the online version this is a major source of revenue. The mozilla foundation recently payed an enormous amount of money for a full page ad. Online advertising is much cheaper but sites like slashdot seem to manage just fine on online advertising.

Nyt has the potential to get millions of visitors on a daily basis. If they provide good quality content there will be lots of regular visitors. They have the content anyway so not exploiting it online would be bad for business.

Now you can't blame the nyt people to explore options for a subscription model. But I don't think that it will be very profitable. There will be a few thousand who will subscribe and it will provide a very modest income but nothing spectecular. Probably the effect on advertisement sales will be negative because of all the people who won't subscribe and take their business elsewhere.

What nyt needs to do is maximize the value of the information they produce every day. They have four sources of income: paper subscriptions, street sales, advertising and online advertising. The last two generally provide more revenue if more people read nyt. The first two are unlikely to be influenced much by the online presence of nyt. Lots of people prefer to hold the paper in their hands. If you combine this information it can be deduced that free online access adds revenue and that restricting access in exchange for subscription fees probably isn't worth the trouble: you'll lose readers, you will lose advertisers and the subscription revenue is unlikely to compensate for that.

Run a Tab

[TomRC]

Run-a-Tab - a workable marketing and accounting variant of micropayments:

Sign up to get an "advance credit" of $24 worth 1200 article pre-paid views - almost like free money, except if you ever cancel your subscription you get charged $24. (So most people will never cancel.) When your "tab" goes over 1000 views, you get charged $20 - and get another advance of $20, worth 1000 views.

Your current tab of remaining pre-paid views is displayed on every article, along with a 'dispute tab' button. Terms and conditions make it clear that you are responsible for monitoring this amount - reducing disputes, and reducing the value to the customer of falsely disputing charges.

Even re-viewing the same article counts as a charge - to keep people from sharing accounts, and to avoid needing to track who has read what. Web browsers or a browser add-in will offer a feature to save some number of days of content from pay-per-view sites, in addition to normal caching.

To minimize problems of someone stealing an account, the default limit of views per day is 20 - the user must explicitly request to view more than that, and thereby accept their current tab.

Disputing a view-charge restores it, no questions asked - just recording that you did a dispute. Dispute twice or more in a day, or dispute a full day's usage, and your name put on a watch list to detect people trying to scam the system. This takes a lot more data and processing, but will apply to fewer subscribers.

If you let your account go inactive for maybe a year, you'll be charged $20 to cover the advance. Reactivate within 2 years to recover your view credits.

Re:Run a Tab

[Anonymous Coward]

"Web browsers or a browser add-in will offer a feature to save some number of days of content from pay-per-view sites, in addition to normal caching."

I have content I paid for on my machine, I'm keeping it forever, even if I have to write the firefox extension to archive it myself.

Re:Run a Tab

[TomRC]

I have content I paid for on my machine, I'm keeping it forever

Maybe allow some intelligence into that. E.g. I don't care to clutter my disk with adverts, at least not beyond a day or two. Don't save any video or animated images that I didn't directly click on - auto-chop them down to a single frame with a link to the original content just in case I want it later.

Where's the irony?

[geekee]

So is the irony that they require registration, or that the registration is free? The registration part is not ironic since it is a step in the direction they are warning about, no more free news. The fact that it's now free is not ironic since the fact that they're making you register means you're not really getting the news for free. The info you provide has value to the New York Times. Whether or not they can cash in in directly for revenue or not, I don't know.

The news(paper) business isn't about news

[Trix]

Let's look at the business model. Where do newpaper revenues come from? Subscribers? No. Advertisers. The only reason that newspapers charge for their paper editions is protect against the age old assumption that if it's free, it must be worthless.

Every newspaper in the country could give away their print editions and still make money.

The "news business" is not now, nor has it ever been, about bringing you the news. It has always been about selling advertisements.

Just because a business provides something that is of use to one set of customers does not mean that that customer base is their primary concern.

The big reason that papers want to keep you, the reader happy, is so they can sell you to more advertisers.

Re:The news(paper) business isn't about news

[Vitriol Angst]

I think there will always be some free news. There are many messages that advertisers, or organizations want people to receive where those people would be unwilling to pay for them. In fact, you rarely see any coverage of products that are not already advertised in some magazines (even the bicycle magazines).

But where we actually purchase entertainment or news, shouldn't there be some provision for a standard of accuracy? No?

Likewise, at a recent movie, I paid for a ticket $7.00. I counted 5 commercials that were not movie previews. I think I should have gotten $2.50 back on my ticket. It's just not fair [stamps foot]. Paying for the movie, did not increase its quality. I think "Finding Nemo" with commercials was better than "Robots" in a movie theater. It was just, OK. Perhaps, with a message about private accounts being a good idea, the movie could have actually been free. No? I'm just screwed, is that what you're saying? And I can get the private account, but I have to pay it all back.

OK, maybe we'll have to pay for all sources of crappy news, and pay lots of money for accurate news, but that will be insider trading.

So, maybe we should just post links to decent Blog sites and forget what this guy at "The New York Times" is saying.

What a Laugh....

[nsnd]

Everytime I go to a NEWS website and it asks me to subscribe... I don't even check to see if they want me to PAY I don't want it.... I can get news from Yahoo.com, FoxNews.com, and plenty of other places.

Why would I pay for something I can get FREE?

Pay for what!?

[hung_himself]

Your typical newspaper consists mostly of the same wire stories available to everyone. The content on the business and sports pages are available elsewhere with less cheerleading and more objectivity. Entertainment news, reviews and even comics are available online. The best columnists are now bloggers. That leaves local news and local advertisements which for larger cities are also available online.

There is still a market for cheap dead tree editions to go with ones coffee or bathroom break but there is no hope for charging for online editions. Heck, many people (myself included) find it too much of a bother to even register to read a newspaper. Why waste your time when the information is just a Google search away...?

Follow the leader

[Digital Pizza]

For a while I was the webmaster for a large newspaper, when they were brought kicking and screaming onto the Web. Something that really stands out in my memory of those days was that they wouldn't make a move without determining what the other papers were doing first. The thinking seemed to be: "if others are doing it, then it's OK, otherwise it's too risky." Newspapers are very (fiscally) conservative organizations, and maybe they need to be.

If a few high-profile papers start charging for all online access to their news, that's when you can expect everyone else to follow suit. I think it's a gradual transition that's happening, though. The papers are well aware that once their customers are used to getting something for free, they resent having it taken away.

Re:NYT Still Has About 1.1 Million Print Subscribe

[snakeOil]

Have you actually RTFM? It's the eigth paragraph down!

Quote: The New York Times on the Web, which is owned by The New York Times Company, has been considering charging for years and is expected to make an announcement soon about its plans. In January, The Times's Web site had 1.4 million unique daily visitors. Its daily print circulation averaged 1,124,000 in 2004, down from its peak daily circulation of 1,176,000 in 1993.

Wall Street Journal

[nukethewhalesagain]

Wired recently had a commentary about how the Wall Street Journal is becoming irrelevant online because it forces its online readers to pay. Does the NYT wish to do the same thing?

Subscriptions

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority of subscription revenues in magazines and newspapers simply covers the cost of printing and delivery. Most income comes from advertisements. Any financial impact the internet has had on the printed media is due to their inability to convert their advertising dollars not from the lack of subscribers.

Is the era of free news content about to end?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully, not just for news, but for everything else. The worthless are being supported with food and everything else, and yet the fucktards that give to the worthless are whining and crying thatthey have no money. I have the fucking answer, stop goving to the fucking worthless, let them work for a fucking change, and if they can't or won't work, let natural selection take over. Nothing on the net should be free, if someone can't afford it, they shouldn't even have a fucking computer to begin with. Giving all these fucking handouts to the fucking poor are the reason why this country is so full of fucking crime.

to the mods, this is not off topic nor is this a troll/flamebait, this is the truth of why there are so many fucking problems in this country.
________________________________________ __________ __________
A vote against a Libertarian candidate is a vote to abolish the constitution itself

FREE Content is growing

[hugesmile]

Is the era of free news content about to end?

Wiki News: Free to the user, anyone can contribe.

1000 articles and counting!

Free as in Freedom

[jdfox]

As with software, there's ambiguity in the meaning of the English word "free". Most of the discussion here is focussing on "free as in beer". Price is important to many, natually enough, not least because of the intrusion required online to make sure you've paid.

But I suspect a lot of /.ers are more concerned with "free as in speech". This is often, but not always, connected to the pricing. "Free" newspapers are owned by businesses whose reason for publishing is to make money: if you're not paying upfront for the paper, then all their revenue is coming from ads, and they thererefore have even more need to keep their editorial policy in line with their advertisers. It's already been pointed out above that supposedly "independent" news media like the BBC aren't all that independent: running a news site really well costs money, and the BBC is still reliant on an increasingly pushy and spin-loving UK government to pay its bills.

Having a no-charge business model also puts pressure on costs, and makes getting cheap or "free" (i.e. no-cost) content all the more attractive. The independence of the reporting can suffer as a result. The NYT has coincidentally just run a story about how the White House is pushing pro-government "news" stories to the networks, paid for by the taxpayer, which don't always clue the viewer who produced them. This isn't necessarily a conspiracy, it's just "good business". The same conflict of interest exists in a corporate-owned newspaper, online or hardcopy.

I think many people attribute a sense of mission to their news provider. Some people think FOX tells it "fair and balanced", and watch it for that reason. Good for them. I personally would rather watch Bullwinkle re-runs than FOX News, but that's beside the point. Consciously or unconsciously, a lot of people believe that their favorite news provider is mostly "telling the truth" about what's going on in the world, and are unable or unwilling to see conflicts of interest, especially when they're unaware of how their favorite news provider's business model works. I simply don't believe that a GE-owned news business is always going to tell the truth about what GE gets up to.

The one large-scale attempt that I'm aware of to build a global news network which is free both of corporate and government control is Indymedia. Their quality varies anywhere from excellent first-hand reporting, to the truly awful. Freedom is like that: you have the freedom to write something which some people really want to hear, and other people really hate. The US and some European govts have been cracking down on Indymedia lately, which doesn't bode well for freedom of speech. This is true even if you don't like Indymedia's anarchist/left-wing editorial policy: people have the right to report the news as they see it. You equally have a right to redress if lies are told about you.

So the Indymedia model is far from perfect. How then can an international news network operate which is free of both corporate and government interference? If 100% free-as-in-freedom news isn't possible without a regular revenue stream, then how do you at least maximize the freedom AND the quality of the content?

PS: BugMeNot helps you skirt around that "free" registration with the NYT.

Pay-per-view results from Google already happen

[tepples]

And the day Google starts routing me to pay-per-view pages without clearly notifying me in advance is the day I find another search engine.

This already happens when you type a linguistic term into Google. You will typically get a lot of results from journal articles in PubMed, where abstracts are free but most full text costs at least 20 USD. You can identify these pay-per-view articles by looking for evidence of NOCACHE instructions, namely the absence of a "Cached" link (for HTML) or the absence of a "View as HTML" link (for PDF). Does this count as "clearly notifying" you?

Re: Payment is the problem -- this is not new

[ruzel]

First, I live in New York and have available to me between 6 or 7 completely free newspapers I can grab. The Times has been competing with free papers like the Village Voice and the Metro for a long time. That aspect is not new. Those papers aren't going anywhere -- why would their web site counterparts?

Secondly, My girlfriend buys the Post because she likes the gossip and it's $1. The whole paper is $1. Ask her to pay for each article and look for the one she wants and then decide to pay .05 or .25 or... she's already moved on folks.

People not wanting to pay is not the problem. She pays $1 for something she peruses for 10 minutes and throws away (hardly different from a web page). Micropayments are the problem. Lack of attention is the problem. This is the attention economy after all. Technically speaking, my time is worth ~.50/minute. It is not worth and will never be worth it for me to look for and buy something that costs less than that. Micropayments are never going to happen because below the dollar mark there is not enough of an incentive for a consumer to even both to consume. They won't happen because any variability below a dollar is virtually meaningless. And even if the interface was virtually totally transparent the user still has to think about a purchase decision. If that decision costs more than the price of the product to be purchased, they will move on before bothering.

Frankly I think the interface on most news sites is also part of the problem. You could never get me to pay for the priveledge of not being able to find what I want. The nature of the commodity needs to change. Use RSS in an RSS browser for starters. That's the way web-based newspapers shoudl look: a list of stories that you can sort through in several different ways. RSS by its nature creates simplicity for the user and I've yet to see it, but there are a couple RSS feeds that I would pay $1-$2/month for. I have a subscription like that for runabot.com ($2/month) and I hardly think about it. I think most people would go for something like that. I don't think the average consumer will EVER go for paying for an article at a time.

Re:NYT Still Has About 1.1 Million Print Subscribe

[Vortran]

Yes.. I did read the article. I certainly may have misunderstood. The way I am reading, the average daily readership over a decade is down by about 5%. I'm guessing that's not horribly significant.

If they had 1.1 million readers per day in 1993 and today have only 300,000 I would say that is significant. I'm not seeing that. I'm seeing that their average readership is essentially unchanged over the entire time span of the Internet "boom".

The only way they could be seen as losing readership is if you presume the online readers would otherwise pay for the printed version.

Free news here to stay

[Bonewalker]

Just because newspapers might all move to an online pay service doesn't mean the average joe won't still get his news for free.

For example, Fox News and CNN already offer free news on television and on their web sites. When/If the newspapers go this route, they will be pulling up the covers as they lie down in their bed of irrelevance.

Re: Payment is the problem -- this is not new

[lucifuge31337]

The whole paper is $1. Ask her to pay for each article and look for the one she wants and then decide to pay .05 or .25 or... she's already moved on folks.

You entire argument about micropayment not working is based on your own idea of the pricing model. What's to stop publishers from charing a $0.50 micropayment for access to not only one article, but the entire day's content. Or that article plus the current day's content.

You raise some valid points, but they are not really related to what I'm talking about...they are more related to poorly implemented micropayment pricing models.

how about more services

[jonniesmokes]

I think the newspapers are forgetting that they own a huge valuable chunk of information (all the past articles). If they made access to that part of a subscription, I'd pay for it. But paying for today's news doesn't do much for me - I have to watch the adds and that's enough payment for me.

Right now, some newspapers sell historical articles, but they charge too much. I may as well go down to the library for $$$/article.

News Has Never Been Free

[4of12]

Is the era of free news content about to end?

The era of "free" news has never even started.

Pretty much everthing the public sees in the news has been purchased already, either by advertisiers that pay for maximum number of eyeballs (and if that requires tailoring what gets shown as "news", then so be it), or indirectly (any news that could conceivably offend large numbers of people, people with power/money, gets dropped).

These days, if you really want to find out what's going on you need to go talk to numerous sources first-hand if you don't want to see the world through someone else's agenda (me and my sources have enough agendas between us already we don't need any 3rd party injecting theirs).

outdated

[BlackShirt]

Just subscribe ...
http://www.economist.com/subscriptions?print= yes ... they will show you the sponsor page ...
(markoni?)

& you will be able to see all the content.

Like salon.com

Business News

[bitspotter]

The business model may die, but the news is the news is the news. News was news before news was business. News will still be news after news stops being business.

This is the attention economy - News attracts attention, therefore news will always have value so long as attention is scarcer than information (ie, news). Anything else is just quibbling over the price.

Re:Business News

[bitspotter]

So DIE, business model! DIE!

Server Side Java-Script check

[KalvinB]

Server Side Java-Script check

All you need is PHP and mySQL (or equivelant) and a few lines of code. On my own site, revenue covers costs so I'm not worried about people blocking Google AdSense by killing Java-Script.

This was just an exercise to devise an effective way it could be done.

If the javascript counter doesn't match the page counter you can pretty much do whatever you want at that point. You can require a payment to allow the user to visit the site, you can just refuse to show content until they turn on javascript, or you can simply use it for statistical purposes to see how many visitors aren't using Java-script.

Once you know what the user's browser is doing on the server side, the possibilities are pretty endless.

Re:Server Side Java-Script check

[bnenning]

Ultimately, the client will always win. Unless something like Palladium becomes required by law, the client can always do one thing and tell the server it did something else.

Not ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not ironic that this article is free. The free business model is not yet ended. It is ironic how often people wrongly use the word ironic!

ISP

[quercus_jones]

Why not let the ISP provide bundles (think cable tv) that come with subscriptions to certain newspaper sites (think ESPN, HBO)? Not that current cable tv doesn't suck.

There's an industry that already knows the answer

[electroniceric]

Pr0n.

If the question is "how do I sell my product when so many others are giving similar product away for free?", somebody's obviously doing something right over at HotSweatyStinkyBooty.com. Pr0n vendors are already selling content on the internet - and giving it away as well, and making a HotSweatyStinky pile of money in the process.

So how do they do it?

So long as I have to throw away 2/3 of the paper

[WillAffleckUW]

it's still got way too many non-targetted ads.

On the other hand, it's great for making paper-mache giant puppets with.

They just jacked the newstand price of the local daily papers here in Seattle - doubling the price - wonder if that could perhaps have a negative impact on circulation ...

What about slashdot?

[scum-e-bag]

Is the era of free news content about to end?

I think nearly everyone has forgotten to take a long hard look at the site they are now reading and the business model it incorporates...

Most of the "pay-per-view" tv stations are just mind numbing propaganda, similar to the printed media... who do you think owns them?

The payment barrier still sucks

[falconwolf]

i.e.: No valid micropayment system exists (STILL)

Actually in a way there is one, Apple's iTunes music store. I haven't used or checked into it but it's my understanding that a person can buy a "credit card" with X amount on it then as you download music the cost are automatically deducted from the card. The card can have more money put on it at anytyme. Apple has done good by their plan. In the first week the store was open they sold more than 1 million songs, and at that tyme the iTunes software was only ported to Macs. The store's been open less than a year yet sales so far have been $30 million.

Falcon

Holy Grail brings buyer to...

[ElitistWhiner]

seller with the newspaper brokering the exchange. NYTimes simply haven't innovated the medium to meet the needs of their sellers. WSJ's manual fill-out cards for corporate reports has the highest fulfillment rate which automating would only decrease its effectiveness.

Micropayments presages the same problem where if everything is priced (ie. automated) then nothing provides a discriminator for the seller and buyer to find each other.

Re:Not biased?

[B.D.Mills]

Most news in the U.S. skews to the left.
Obviously you don't watch Fox. To Murdoch, "Fair and balanced" means giving 83% of air time to the Republican party. (Source: "Outfoxed" documentary)

Some science journals will charge $18 for a week

[leonbrooks]

...for one article. That's not a micropayment, and if they wonder why they're not being read except by subscribers, then not even a 2x4 would get the answer into their dense little crania.

BBC Radio

[falconwolf]

Though it's been something like ten years since I have, I used to listen to BBC on the Shortwave. As I'm too young I didn't listen to Morrow, which I'd loved to do.

Falcon

Reading online

[falconwolf]

I always print it out in the end, and I'm certainly not the only one...

If I read too much onlione, too long a webpage of text, my eyes get sore. If it is more than say half a printed page I will print it then read the hardcopy because of this. Falcon

I wouldn't bet it on it

[stonedonkey]

If the 'Net as a whole gravitates towards pay content, it will not happen overnight. People have gotten used to getting all kinds of stuff for free for so long (email, web hosting, image hosting, personal portals, et cetera) that it causes an unholy uproar every time you dare to put a price tag on something. Speaking as someone who writes for a news outlet with a little under 100k subscriptions, I can tell you that this is why the online subscription model has been so slow to evolve.

And not only do you create an uproar, but there's always someone on the 'Net who's (1) willing to survive on a threadbare advertising-based margin for the sake of indie glory, or (2) a freebie-dishing moron who will crash and burn in a blaze of glory, but not before he's induldged the masses with months of Free Stuff that a sustainable business could not hope to afford.

The more fundamental problem here is that the 'Net is inherently an information resource with a deep basis in the belief of freedom of information and a right to privacy. It began as a network of universities exchanging research data, and it continues as a global village of topics ad nauseum. Good luck trying to make people pay for something when they can get a reasonly close approximation by simply entering a different URL. This is the beauty and the curse of online business. You're easily accessible, but so is everyone else, forcing the provider to make a huge content proposition just to get their foot in the door with the customer. For a news outlet, it's the amount and quality of stories you can put up. For a reseller, it's the size of your inventory and the ease of navigation. For a search engine, it's the speed and accuracy of your results, among other things. And so forth.

No, it's not

[nilbog]

No, it's not.

I will not pay for news. So help me I will use "KazzaNews" if I have to! This will be an interesting new form of piracy.

Not the same page

[AwaxSlashdot]

I do have AdBlock and FlashBlock ... but the page is not the same when your are a subscriber : the whole frameset is different and don't have huge blank space from blocked ad.

Place to read the source article without login

[WillAffleckUW]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/03/15/business/pa pers.html

plus, they don't soak up bandwidth as much.

maybe

[rugburn]

micropayment would work via a pre-paid avatar?

roughly equivalent to putting a 20$ balance on an anonymous(read as falsely registered) email acct?

dont some pr0n sites band together and permit users who have registered with one to access all the others? maybe the multimedia conglomerates (knight-ridder, gannett, scripps, tribune, etc.) should consider a similar arrangement?

NYT doesn't understand

[webhat]

In the Netherlands and many other European countries - I'm not sure about the US - there are free daily print newspapers handed to commuters. I know in the Netherlands that these have more readers than the regular printed press and survive on advertising space only. It's true they often print the messages from the newswire verbatim. (Reuters, ANP, etc)

It has actually raised the number of regular newspaper readers from the awful numbers that are regularly quoted in other countries.

I don't understand what they are so fussed about. If you want more readers give your print paper away, go tabloid and sell more advertising space.

I'm sure there's an Underpants Gnome just waiting to profit from this.