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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

free news content

[Anne_Nonymous]

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

Paypal me $1 for the answer.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Reg free link

[bendelo]

Reg-free link

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

[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.

It was never free in the first place...

[oscartheduck]

It was just without charge.

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...

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.

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..

[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.

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

[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.

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.

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!

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

[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.

-

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?

[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!!!).. :)

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.

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.

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.

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?

Re:Tradeoff?

[PoopJuggler]

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: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.)

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.

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.

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.

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...

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!

HAH!

[borgheron]

Yeah right. This "end" has been heralded several times before and it's never happened.

GJC

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.

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: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.

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.