Slashdot Mirror
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.
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
Advertising on the internet doesn't work because they're doing it wrong. The more in your face they make it, the harder we readers concentrate on ignoring it, and when it gets too outrageous we put in ad blockers. ADVERTISING SHOULD NOT MOVE IN A PAGE YOU'RE TRYING TO READ. When I see a page of blinkey flashing twirley ads with two paragraphs per page, I know that the site is pure shit and is only there to garner cash for some greedhead. They're lucky if they get me to read the first page.
The lower overheads need to come in the form of lower wages for the top earners. Millions of dollars a year, even hundreds of thousands per year for ONE single employee is ludicrous.
Free Martian Whores!
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.
Eventually, some portion of what you are paying for the container goes to pay for the content. In the case of newspapers, it's actually a significant portion. A newspaper costs a few pennies to print, and even with delivery and markup, the bulk of the money the newspaper company is paid is for content, not the printing of hieroglyphs on thinly-pounded dead trees.
Also, digital distribution is far cheaper, but it isn't free.
I agree that digital music and other information sources are more expensive than they seemingly should be. But micropayments might help solve that problem. Headlines and a brief summary are either free or available on a really dirt cheap subscription (a dollar a month, say). If you want to read a full article, you pay a penny. Read an entire newspaper's worth of articles of interest to you, it'll cost you a quarter or so. Compare that to the 75 cents to a dollar that a newspaper costs today on paper, and that's probably a pretty accurate reflection of how much of your money today goes into content.
A lot of the free news sites are actually making money on ad revenues, and hopefully that will support decent journalism, but I know my local paper is laying off people (including reporters) left and right because they aren't being paid enough to reprint their news, and print subscriptions are down. Someone's gotta pay a reporter to go out and collect the news, and analyze it, and write it up. Someone's gotta be paid to fact-check, and spell-check, and digitize photos. Someon'e gotta get paid for decent layout (whether it be print or web). Someone's gotta get paid to maintain the web servers and the Internet connection.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
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.
That's the thing -- we've NEVER paid for content, we pay for its container, whether it be a book, a newspaper, an album, or a DVD.
I kind of sympathise with your angle, but it needs firming up. A blank notepad is cheaper than a novel or a newspaper. A DVD-R is cheaper than a DVD. So we *are* paying for content. ... and the content is far from being free to create.
Yet, to me at least, the content is less valuable without the packaging. A printed book is worth more to me than a PDF, simply because I can read it in more comfort. It's the combination of content and format that has value.
The problem comes as digital formats become more ubiquitous. If I owned an eBook reader - a better one than is currently available - then possibly a digital copy of a book or newspaper would be worth more to me than a printed book. This is already happening for music: lots of people actually prefer to have MP3s instead of CDs.
If digital distribution is the future, *and* we somehow believe that digital copies should not be paid for, then how does content get financed? I don't know the answer. I'm fascinated in seeing how things work out.
For news, at least, I think that competition will push consumer prices towards zero, such that pay sites won't be able to compete.