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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."
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?
Free Martian Whores!
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.
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.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.