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Micropayments For News — Holy Grail Or Delusion?
newscloud writes "Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab sounds off on micropayments for news content, on the side of the argument that says they are a dangerous delusion: 'What does it mean for journalism? It could mean charging for different platforms, for early alerts, for special members-only access to certain premium or value-added content. But I'm pretty sure of one thing: It doesn't mean charging people fractions of a cent to read a news story, no matter how sophisticated the process.' The article provides good context on the debate over micropayments from a 2003 piece by Clay Shirky, to recent analysis and opinion by Masnick, Outing, Graham, and Reifman. Google's micropayment plans were recently discussed here."
If the content is premium content, something that I know is more valuable or interesting than elsewhere, then I have no problem paying for it. This is the reason people for pay for Wall Street Journal and the likes too - they get more out of it and the writers are specialized in the area.
For everyday news, no. I want opinions and better writing than just simply telling the news.
I'll just get my news fix at free sites.
Easiest way to find a free alternative. Most people already pay for TV of some sort on top of internet, so if every single news outlet (including local news outlets and blogs and places like slashdot) started charging for you to view news, people would simply watch the news they already technically pay for. I have no problem paying for new news. The problem with our news is that every outlet runs the same story with their commentary slapped on top.
Advertising on the internet simply does not work, and micropayments are never going to fly. Newspapers need to adopt the NPR beg-a-thon method. They need to learn to live with lower overheads and lower revenues. Their sales forces need to convert into grant-writers and they need to focus on asking their readers and big corporate donors for money.
It's the Holy Grail of media outlets, because it would get people to pay for something that has been given away for a long time. But it's a delusion as well, since efforts at doing just that have not met with anything remotely like success.
For instance, the New York Times tried to do a "Times Select" paid service with a lot of formerly free content available for the low low price of $10.99 per year or so. It must not have worked, because a few months later all the content that used to be hidden behind the paywall was placed back on the free site.
I am officially gone from
With a very few exceptions, news is worth what you can get advertisers to pay for access to the consumers. This has been true since the advent of television journalism half a century ago.
It's the newspaper's own fault that craigs list took over classified advertising. They had the better part of a decade to get their acts together and get the ads online before craigs list existed. And it's their own fault that they still haven't learned the Google advertising lesson so that they're still serving worthless banner ads that many if not most of the browsers block.
If they continue to refuse to embrace their new reality, they will continue to fail. Such is fate.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
If the content is premium content, something that I know is more valuable or interesting than elsewhere, then I have no problem paying for it.
The problem with that argument when applied to newspapers is that news is an experiential good and by definition you cannot possibly know if it "is more valuable or interesting than elsewhere" until after you have the information. So you have to pay for it and hope that it turns out to be valuable. You can rely on the reputation or reliability of the source, but that still doesn't tell you in advance that the information is good. Even if others tell you it is valuable, you might not find it to be so - think of a movie that all your friends like but you don't.
I sense a problem that can be solved with S****ISM (deleted as a proactive measure to stop the political-right from having a heart-attack). The BBC news is light-years ahead of anything in the USA. It's also politically independent, unlike state-run newspapers in Iran, China and Russia.
Can you not see a simple solution when it's staring you in the face? Has Rupert Murdoch out-foxed you all? Create an independently funded public institution, with a mandate to "educate", "inform" and "entertain", and maybe the citizens of the USA wont score so poorly on survey questions such as "were WMDs found in Iraq".
And your news content wont be beholden to advertising interests.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Forcing people to pay for news will only increase the tendency for people to only read news they agree with. What will "save" the news industry is a shift away from creating the content to vetting content created by interested parties. While most newspapers (US) have had deteriorating quality since the Spanish-American war most in depth reporting has been done by interested parties. Groklaw is a good example of a single subject reporting. What good news aggregators should do is make it easy for people interested in SCO to find Groklaw, press releases by involved parties, and alternative views on the subject. Real "news" reform would force government, corporations and even non-profits to be more transparent in their dealings, making it easier for interested parties to research and create quality news. Tort reform to keep legal action from crushing individuals prior to judicial review (ie loser pays) would have significant impact too.
Anyone like me who has published a paper newspaper knows that it is all about circulation. Every additional cent that you charge for a copy of your publication does not increase your profits. Instead, it decreases your circulation.
Point in fact: when I lived in Omaha, Nebraska I bought a copy of the New York Times every day and read it on the treadmill.
Now, I live in New York City where the New York Times costs $2.00 a copy. I have bought it about three times at that price.
In short, micropayments is a sure way to send people somewhere else for the news.
Yes, but anything smaller than a million dollars is chump change for these rich greedheads, so a buck IS a micropayment -- to them.
Free Martian Whores!
I think this is one key point: micro payments need to be micro. I'm not paying $.25 to read the on-line version of an AP article on the NYT site. If you figure there are 100 articles in the weekly edition of the NYT, then a single article is worth something less than 1/2 a cent, in print. If you eliminate the printing and distribution costs, say 1/4 or 1/8 a cent per article. I might pay a few pennies to read the entire site, but I'm not willing to pay anywhere near the dead-tree price for on-line news.
Another point: whatever they take for micropayments it has to be something easy and ubiquitous. I'm not jumping through hoops so that I can pay 1/8th of a cent to read the obits. And whatever it is, it can't be something that only works one place. I'm not signing up for "NYTCa$h" that can't be used anywhere but the NYT site.
My personal opinion is that news will continue to be ad-supported for the foreseeable future. As technology improves and ads become more targeted, they will be increasingly effective and less annoying. Hopefully this will happen soon enough to keep journalism alive.
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Think about this: when a reporter covers an area that you're an expert in, how much do they get wrong? For instance, if you know a lot about computers, how often do you hear a reporter completely misrepresent something or get some key fact exactly backwards? Now extrapolate that to EVERY area of expertise (except possibly sports) and determine how reliable journalism is. Unless there's a video of the actual event (and I mean a video as it happens, not Bob from the Washington Bureau shaking his head as the ambulances drive away) you can pretty much count on getting half the facts, badly distorted, and intentionally slanted to fit the reporter's (or their editor's) bias.
News has ALWAYS been this way--it's just that you're noticing it more. About 35 years ago I had an article written about me in the local paper. It was filled with "direct quotes" of things that I never said, contained about six factual errors in two paragraphs, and was essentially completely divorced from the reality of what had happened.
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For one simple reason, micropayments as they are debated here will never work.
When the product is too cheap, then the time and effort buying the product is the true cost to the buyer.
In other words, after a certain point, it just has to be free, or it simply isn't worth it.
What's more, if the seller doesn't value their product enough to charge a non-micro amount for it, then what they are doing is failing to make a value proposition, which is the essence of a business transaction.
No one will pay pennies for something worth pennies.
Newspapers are already cheap, but they are not free. But they aren't micro-priced either. Whether it is buying a paper at the stand or subscribing months at a time, there is a valid value proposition there.
On-line media has yet to find that value proposition. Without that proposition, debating the technical details concerning how payments will be made is getting waaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of yourself.
The problem with news is that it is an experiential good meaning you can't determine it's value in advance.
Indeed, and while we get over this with periodicals by using past performance as a guide, I'd say that this only works if you look at whole edition of a newspaper as a bundle, rather than looking article by article.
If I loved one Guardian article, I don't think that's a reliable indicator that I'll love some arbitrary Guardian article from today's edition.
Rather, I've found in the past that a typical copy of the Guardian (GBP 1.20) contains a a bunch of headlines I can skim through to get a general idea of what's going on in the world; three or four news articles I want to read in full; maybe one in-depth double page spread I can get my teeth into; some lightweight commentary; a letters page; reviews; a crossword and sudoku if I'm bored later on.
If you unbundled those and tried to charge for the separately, I don't think it would work. I happily pay the cover price for a newspaper knowing that I'll skip more than half of it. But I don't know which half until after I've paid, and neither does the editor.
It's worth noting that newspapers don't do radio news and they don't do television news. Each medium ultimately finds its own business model.
Paper, radio, TV news content is paid for by advertising.
The shape of internet news is already evident. The only thing missing is blog sites that start bringing in enough revenue to put journalists and researchers on staff. Suppose HubPages or Blogger decided to set up a section for hard, fact-checked news and well-respected columnists. The ad rate in this section would climb fast. Positive feedback and competition does the rest.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
A few things I've found by having several news sites in my rotation.
With that in mind I would possibly pay for a handful of 'full stories' every week but for the bulk of them they're just not that interesting. I like knowing Event A happened but I don't need the in-depth analysis. But I wouldn't sign up on multiple sites and hand over payment information willy-nilly nor would I want to have to jump through multiple hoops to get access to the story. By the time that happens I will have already lost interest. Don't even start with putting down a balance on each site to have access to their content.