Google To Offer Micropayments To News Sites

CWmike writes "Google is promoting a payment system to the newspaper industry that would let Web surfers pay a small amount for individual news stories, an idea that could help publishers struggling with the impact of the Internet. The plans were revealed in a document Google submitted to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), which had solicited ideas for how to monetize content online, a task some publishers have had difficulty with. 'The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants,' Google said in the document. Google said it had no specific products to announce yet."

Comments

Great idea!

[Stuarticus]

Let me start by paying nothing for this one, I'll gladly give Murdoch even less.

Re:Great idea!

[mcgrew]

If there is no advertising, I'll pay. But if there are ads, let the advertisers pay. I'm paying for content by looking at ads, if you want me to pay cash for your content you're going to have to give me a clean, ad-free page that doesn't blink and flash.

Funny, the Illinois Times, a weekly Springfield paper, doesn't even charge for its print version. If they can make money from advertising alone, why can't other papers? It's ludicrous that anyone wants me to pay for a web page that blinks and flashes.

And as long as there are online papers that don't charge, good luck charging. As long as there are free sources for news, why would anyone pay?

Re:Great idea!

[dnahelicase]

All we can really do is let the industry die and THEN see if it is so valuable that it needs resurrecting. The fact that newspaper conglomerates keep harping on about how necessary they are for the proper functioning of democracy means nothing to me

I don't think the industry will ever die, just the conglomerates . Before they were around there were hundreds of newspapers that served the very local needs they were in. I just moved to a small town and what is in my newspaper? A bunch of AP crap that I can get from any other newspaper or website in any form I want. I generally don't care about the AP stories anyway. As big newspapers die, new forms of media and journalism will grow to feed the needs of the community. They aren't falling victim to the tyrants of the internet - they are failing to adjust their mindsets to a changing consumer market.

I'm not going to pay to look at national ads that I see everywhere, but I don't mind paying a small subscription to read local news and also get presented with ads for local retailers.

Re:Great idea!

[mejogid]

I don't believe it's reasonable to expect all papers to be funded by advertisers. Things like investigative journalism, sending journalists to press conferences, researched opinion pieces and the like *are* expensive, and somebody needs to fund them. Free (gratis not libre) press only exists because of the paid press and the likes of the AP/Reuters who do the initial research. People definitely pay for a higher quality of news coverage online - look at Bloomberg. Granted that's a niche, but I personally would be willing to pay a reasonable amount (less than the cost of a daily newspaper) for better, more up to date news coverage with more insightful editorials.

Re:Great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

If there is no advertising, I'll pay. But if there are ads, let the advertisers pay. I'm paying for content by looking at ads, if you want me to pay cash for your content you're going to have to give me a clean, ad-free page that doesn't blink and flash.

The problem with this is: you won't be willing to pay the equivalent of what that site is making right now by displaying ads.

Or, put in other words: you take the income they get from ads now and divide by average unique visitors per article, and you'll get a figure which you, the visitor, will consider too big.

Of course, the problem with THAT is that the stats are based on a world which, so far, hasn't seen a viable micropayment mechanism other than perhaps PayPal, which is hated for all kinds of secondary reasons.

Perhaps Google will manage to get micropayments right.

Re:Great idea!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never really understood this reasoning, people pay for magazines, newspapers, movies,... with a lot of ads in them. But all of the sudden when it's on the internet it has to be either pay, or ads.

I find it completely reasonable that ads make something cheaper, but not necessarily free.

Re:Great idea!

[SatanicPuppy]

Wow, an indie weekly that is ad supported? How imaginative! It's certainly different from every other ad supported indie weekly!

The problem is, indie weeklies have crap news. If you want to know what band is playing at what club, you can check the weekly. If you want free personal ads, you can check the weekly. If you want well researched news articles about the place where you live, you're outta luck. They may have a couple of op-ed pieces, with-- maybe--one source, and, if you're lucky, the source will actually be a reliable source.

I actually used to run an indie weekly, so I know that of which I speak. Tiny staff, constant pressure to get ads, no ability to tell off an advertiser...I mean, if you were getting ads from the Religious Right, you couldn't write op eds about them, because the money was more important than your integrity. Having to do your own collections; getting paid in fricking barter from small advertisers. It's not a great business.

Your argument is like something I'd imagine hearing when cable companies were starting up. "Who's going to pay for TV?" Answer: people who want more than what you can get in a model that is completely reliant on ad revenue. If your customer is the advertiser, then you are beholden to the advertiser. If your customer is an individual who pays then you have some independence.

Re:Great idea!

[cornicefire]

"Who's going to pay for TV?" Answer: people who want more than what you can get in a model that is completely reliant on ad revenue. If your customer is the advertiser, then you are beholden to the advertiser. If your customer is an individual who pays then you have some independence.
Peter Wayner gave a talk at Google about helping to pay for shoe leather several years ago:

http://www.wayner.org/talks/gtalk.html

This is the major problem with the free-only ecology. A friend of mine sat me down when I first started writing a book and explained that it was a very different process than writing a long, long magazine article. The newspapers and magazines, he explained, have two loyalties: the subscribers and the advertisers. Both pay the bills. The job for a newspaper or magazine writer is to attract the kind of audience that will make the advertisers happy.
A book, however, is sold directly to the reader. The writer's loyalty is to the audience first and last. There's no complicated dance with an advertiser. That's why books continue to be the preferred ways for someone who really has a strong message to deliver. It's a medium built for Anne Coulters, the Dan Browns and the Popes. There's no editorial hand wringing or demands for "balance" to get in the way. There's a very tight feedback loop.
The free information ecology is the exact opposite. The same picky consumer who could make book authors dance has very little leverage over the free ecology. The free economy can only be dominated by those who get their rent money from other sources. Sometimes this won't affect their writing, but many times it will. The problem is that the free ecology doesn't have the feedback loop. The reader doesn't have the same leverage with the creator. Sometimes it may work out well, but in most cases, the creator will take care of the one who pays the bills first. It's just how the world has to work.

Re:Great idea!

[paiute]

Yeah, remember how there weren't going to have to be any ads on cable television, because we were already going to be paying for it once?

Re:Great idea!

[mcgrew]

The problem is, indie weeklies have crap news.

Well lets see, this issue of the IT has "The Governor blames everybody but himself" about his new book; "Remembering Everett Dirksen"; "Haunted hot spots"; "Headmaster's visit" about Obama; "Order in the court" about crime; "East side residents fear a steel barrier at 10th Street" about the high speed rail coming here; "New law prohibits involuntary sterilization"; "High-speed opposition to Third Street rail corridor" among others.

What are the SJ-R's headlines today? "Quinn marks Sept. 11 anniversary" - yeah that's important to me -- not. "SIU president backs latest cigarette tax proposal" as if what the SIU president thinks about that subject matters. "ExpressCare puts waiting times online" sounds like what one would expect from an indie weekly. "Thousands of Illinois state workers get hefty pensions" news? "Woman attacked with metal baseball bat" well, if you know her or live in her neighborhood, you don't need the newspaper to find out what's going on, and if not it's just gossip about strangers. Same with "Salvage yard burglarized".

I'd say it's the mainstream papers that have crap news, not the indies; at least, not the local indie here. You obviously didn't follow the link, because they DO have well researched news articles about the place where I live. Don't judge all the indies by the rag you ran. Do you think the big dailies don't have constant pressure to get advertisers and can tell them off? If ads were easy to sell they wouldn't be having problems, now would they? If your paper were good advertisers would be begging for ink and you could tell the nutjobs to go away.

About the time CNN and empty-v started, when I first got cable, there were maybe twenty stations. Only the broadcast stations ran ads, and the movies weren't censored and they didn't have those stupid logos at the bottom of the screen, let alone ads jumping out from the other side of the screen while the show was still on. And it only cost ten bucks a month and included HBO.

The problem today is corporate greed, and that same greed is what's killing newspapers, record companies, and the economy itself.

Yay! No more ads!

[Joe U]

Since they're getting paid already, that means the banner and intrusive flash ads on news sites will stop, right?

(Sure it will)

Re:Yay! No more ads!

[elrous0]

The most annoying to me is at the movies. I pay $10 to see a movie, and still I have to watch 15 minutes of car ads and Coke commercials before I can even get to the movie trailers (which are also ads). I could come 30 minutes late and not miss a minute of the actual movie that I *paid* to see (and I would if it didn't cost me a decent seat).

Re:Good luck with that one ....

[darthflo]

Why not? As long as the process is quick and painless and the cost low enough (i.e. a few cents), I wouldn't mind that one click to read the full article with images and everything (and without ads).

It's similar to the model of those boxes containing a stack of newspaper to which you get access by inserting a quarter or two. Of course, one could get the whole stack and distribute it for free; but in reality most people will just get one paper (i.e. read the article) and get on with their lives.

It'll be interesting to see how they respond

[MikeRT]

The media is very biased and pisses off a lot of center-right potential customers because it is often so one-sided. It also does a terrible, terrible job as a "watchdog" as it often just parrots whatever a defense attorney or prosecutor say. It rarely has people follow local corruption cases and really dig down and write hard-hitting stories.

Now, what'll the media do if the few real journalists become the money-making rock stars of their field? How will it respond if more conservative writers start bringing in big bucks.

My guess is that it won't make a difference at many outlets like the NYT. It'll be a cold day in hell before they get actual conservatives and libertarians writing for them, do serious journalism again, etc.

Re:It'll be interesting to see how they respond

[HikingStick]

Far worse, IMO, is that most major media outlets simply re-release Associated Press (AP) content. Very little original news reporting really goes on anymore, except in the largest stories (e.g., wars, disasters) where the topic being covered can easily be covered from multiple angles without overlap.

The main word in that last sentence is "easily". As I see it, too many media outlets want an easy way to fill their content containers (e.g., print press, websites, TV newscasts) without encouraging the kind of in-depth coverage that was once the mainstay of reporting. We need more news hounds who will go beyond the breaking headlines, the quips from public officials, and what they can quickly Google on the topic to doing real investigative journalism.

Think of it in the context of the recent kidnap recovery in California. Did any member of the press break the story that the perp was groundskeeper next door, of a lot that overlooked his little prison camp? No. That information came out after the police investigated and made the discovery.

I'm not suggesting that journalists should interfere with police investigations, or that they should have beat the police to that bit of information, but I wonder how many newspeople actually were out there trying to conduct their own investigations of this perp, and how many were just trying to be the first back to the office (or studio) with the most recent quip from an official investigator or a family member. To me, it seems as if journalism has become more like the paparazzi--simply haning out and hoping they get the best shot, or that they are first to press with some juicy new tidbit.

Okay. Enough of my ranting and raving. The post was about Google promoting micropayments for news items served up through Google News. If they can make it work, it will be a good thing, but unless news outlets go back to some old-fashioned, pavement-pounding journalism, it will soon be like a respirator on a brain dead body. No matter how much air you pump into a dead thing, it is still dead.

The right price

[pmontra]

Considering the price of a paper copy of a newspaper and the number of articles in it, the right price of a single piece of news could be 0.01 cents or less (EUR or USD, it's about the same if we look at the order of magnitude). However if we think that the same piece of news can be replicated infinite times with zero marginal costs of production, the price of a single copy goes down quickly to zero. Surprisingly, the more interesting is the piece of news (and so more read/replicated), the less it should cost. Basically newspapers are facing the problems of the music industry: they found themselves selling a product with suddenly no costs of reproduction and they are resisting the urge of finding a new business model or disinvest and move to another market (I mean the labels/editors, the artists/writers are locked into doing what they can do).

Re:The right price

[natehoy]

But what is the cost that went into that article?

The individual-copy cost might APPROACH zero, but it never reaches it. However, the consumed costs for the vast majority of readers for the vast majority of articles is now zero.

And for smaller papers that cover more local-interest news, it's even worse because their costs are nowhere near zero, but the number of people willing to pay for it is dwindling, not increasing. So the cost-per-subscriber goes up, and at the same time a lot of their news is covered very shallowly by free media. So you can read an in-depth analysis of a local fire, with pictures, reasons why the fire happened, etc, but you have to pay for it. Or you can read a headline with a brief summary on Reuters for free.

For most people, the brief summary is appropriate. But that Reuters story is a summary of an article that (a) cost money to gather, and (b) is of deep interest to a percentage of the population. 10 years ago, free wasn't available so everyone bought the detailed story and skimmed it. Now free IS available and only a few people buy the detailed story, so to recoup the costs of gathering the story, the original source has to charge more (or invest less) to make a profit.

Result: Newsgathering-in-depth is slowly waning. Eventually, as the local papers close, a larger news outlet might get a user submission of a picture and post a one-liner that a fire happened in East Noob that no one cares about.

Re:The right price

[proslack]

The problem is that "zero" won't pay for the journalist and his/her expenses, the editors, the IT team, the marketing department, the building they work in, the administrative staff, the attorney, or the hardware that serves up the news. There's a basic infrastructural cost that can't be eliminated regardless of the media format.

Re:The right price

[proslack]

Well...the news industry is at least two hundred years old, considering it is specifically mentioned in the US 1st Amendment, so it isn't all that new, at least compared to the Industrial Age.

The catch is that bloggers and twitter scavenge quite a bit of their factual content from "professional" news sources. An additional problem with twitter (which I don't use) and TV are the problems with archiving content; its quite a bit easier to search for a text article than video (granted that some programs have associated text subtitles).

Another problem with blogs and tweets is that there is no accountability. With a larger news organization there is editorial oversight and at least some pretense that the content is factual (if for no other reason than to avoid litigation).

The solution to this might be some sort of accrediting agency for "amateur journalists", which grants some sort of credential and does random quality/fact checks of member's articles. Heck, for all I know that actually exists; I'm a scientist, so this is all a bit beyond my specific skill sets. I seem to recall that HP Lovecraft was a member of some sort of amateur press association.

Re:Good luck with that one ....

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is I don't trust the computer with my money. Even though I might be willing to pay a reasonable small amount for some articles, I do not trust linking my payment information to a mouseclick.

There's been many stories of people running up astronomical phone bills because their phone used costly services in the background with no easy means of knowing what it is doing and what it is costing. I need to be assured that the computer will never run amok with my money - or worse - rack up bills on credit that I then have to pay, whether or not I might have had the money for it.

There is needs to be a built-in stop. In real-life, for example, paying cash, it is very hard to accidentally spend without knowing that you are spending and how much. Even paying by credit card, the bank will call and verify if there's a unusual series of transactions, which serves to limit the financial damage in the event of a "bug". Micropayments needs to solve this problem (for example, by using pre-issued time-time-use cryptographic tokens in lieu of serial-numbered bills) before I am comfortable trusting financial access to a general-purpose web-browsing computer. I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Re:Information Wants To Be Free

[jarocho]

This is one of the more interesting aspects of the coming pay vs. free online news content issue. On the web, is it ethical for a newspaper to charge for reposted/reprinted AP and Reuters articles, while those original sources continue to offer their articles for free? Because at that point, are you paying the newspaper for the content, or the hosting of the content?

Another aspect is advertising. Since - despite all appearances to the contrary - newspapers are still in business to make money, are they going to expect paying online subscribers to click-through and suffer with various ads, and justify it by saying that they have ads in their print editions as well, and that it "keeps costs down"?

We keep hearing that the papers can't survive on web ads. Yet they persist, and grow more annoying and absurd in their iterations. Perhaps it's the papers' plan is for us to pay them just to make the ads go away. :)

Bottom line, though, I think the papers are going to want to have it both ways.

Re:I like it

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

P.S - A *very* important feature. I want a checkbox that says, "at no time will your money ever go to Rupert Murdoch".

Rupert Murdoch published Fight Club despite his own personal dislike for the moral of the story (no surprise that he'd dislike the moral since it was aimed squarely at him and his ilk). The guy ain't all bad.

Re:I like it

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

He's in business. that is the general principle of it.