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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.
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
The problem with news is that it is an experiential good meaning you can't determine it's value in advance. You only know whether it was worth something AFTER you read it. So why would someone pay for news that might or might not be valuable? Usually because the source has a track record of providing good information (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc) or you have some other reason to suspect that the information might be valuable (information about a stock that is not widely known for instance). But the seller of information by definition cannot know what the information is worth to the buyer in advance. Generally the seller finds out it was worth something to the buyer if the buyer buys information from them again.
There is money to be made in paying for content that can be had for free elsewhere. Apple's iTunes is proof enough of that. BUT it has to provide something you can't easily get from the free (even if illegal) alternatives. That could be convenience, it could be support, it could be complementary technology (iPod/Kindle), it could be reliability, it could be unusually insightful analysis, and it could be other things. Just copying the latest AP news has some value but not enough many people will pay for it directly.
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.
No. I think we all know, thanks to the movies, that the holy grail is guarded by a really bored knight of the round-table even to this day and is a common looking cup that can heal your dad's wounds, and then will cause an earthquake opening a great chasm that will swallow any (especially hot nazi dominatrix-type women) who try to grab it, instead of chosing to live...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
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
That's the thing, they think we want content. Well, we do, but we've never paid for content. I can read the local paper at McDonald's or any number of other places for free. I won't buy news, but I'll buy a newspaper once in a while, and it will get passed around the office for everyone else to read for free.
I guess that makes me a pirate in the eyes of "content providers".
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. We were always free to tape friends' LPs and we were always free to record TV shows and movies on VHS (well, since the advent of the VCR anyway). We didn't buy music, we bought records. We didn't buy movies, we bought tapes. We didn't buy news, we bought newspapers.
Now that everything's digital they want us to pay two bucks for a song and you don't even get a 45, they want a buck for a newspaper and we don't even get the paper itself?
Listen up, young people -- don't let the greedy moneygrubbers steal your money buy letting them sell you something that has always been free. Bits are like air; they're free and always have been. If you want to sell air you have to wrap a scuba tank or a balloon around it. If you want to sell bits you likewise have to have a container, like a CD or an LP or a sheaf of paper.
These idiots think I'll buy something that's completely free from a myriad of sources. Must be some good shit they're smoking!
Free Martian Whores!
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.
Maybe the newspapers could start charging Linden Dollars for stories? :)
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.
The general public doesnâ€(TM)t put any value on the source of their 'news'. In other words, a twitter post is just as good as something from the AP. This is partially due, IMO, to shitty poor journalism, so little time and effort is spent investigating and digging for original content nowadays. Rather, today 'journalists' slap together a handful of talking points and use other news organization's reports as sources. Journalism today has by and large become a cycle of shit, thanks in large part to the freak show circus of cable 'news'.
So, I don't see myself paying Google for the same quality of 'news' I can get for free from any random jerk's blog.
FAQs are evil.
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.
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!
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 next thing you'll be telling me is that when you pay to go to a concert, you're only paying for the actual paper ticket rather than the "content" of the performance
When I go to a concert I'm not buying anything. I'm paying for a service, just like when my employer pays me for my time or I pay a barber to cut my hair or tip my bartender. When I buy that band's CD I'm buying a CD. When I hear them on the radio, it's free. When I tape it off the radio it's free. The content is free, the CD and service (concert) are not.
In the past, a couple friends made copies of something. Nobody cared. But the content wasn't "free"; it's just the potential for abuse was small.
Well, it's hardly abuse if it's legal, and in the 1970s copying tapes was explicitly legalized (it's since been outlawed). And if it was so harmless, why did Jack Valenti as head of the MPAA say that "The VCR is to the movie industry what Jack the Ripper was to women"? The fact is that the music labels decried taping and even lied on album covers that it was illegal, when it had specifically been legalized.
And distributing bootlegs WAS a problem; I remember an incident in the early '70s where Willy Nelson (I think it was him, long time ago) got in trouble when he went into a gas station and found bootleg copies of his stuff for sale and trashed the place. IIRC both he and the proprieter went to jail. Commercial copyright infringement isn't just illegal, it's wrong.
Since KSHE changed their format in 1967 and became the world's first FM stereo rock station, they've had a feature called "the seventh day" from the station's beginning and still continue today. They play seven whole uncut albums and even cue the listener to get his tape recorder ready, and still do. This is in St Louis, with a population of millions able to hear and record the show. See Birth of a label-sanctioned pirate radio station
When Ted Nugent's Stranglehold album came out I had it on tape a full week before it was available for sale - KSHE had played it, and I'd taped it. As that album kicked ass I bought the LP after it was for sale. This is how a lot of young "pirates" use P2P; someone will recommend something, and they want to listen before they shell out their hard earned dosh.
The internet has changed a lot of things, but as to noncomercial copyright infringement the only thing it changed was to give the media moguls something to bitch to congress about.
Free Martian Whores!