Micropayment: the debate
Rupert Murdoch says his papers will start charging for online content, the FT and others report. His News Corp announced a 47% drop in revenues.
But a New Media Age survey found that 77 per cent of UK regular online readers were not prepared to pay for access to news websites. Many commentators doubt if online subscriptions are viable.
Micropayment is one solution on offer. Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time says: a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.
In today's Guardian, Frank Fisher says:
This needs a big player . . . Google already has the infrastructure and the reputation . . . Not only that, but they're touted as news content's No 1 enemy, via GoogleNews. They "owe" the press one.
Slate's founding editor, in a piece for the New York Times headed You can't sell news by the slice points out:
Newspaper readers have never paid for the content (words and photos). What they have paid for is the paper that content is printed on. A week of The Washington Post weighs about eight pounds and costs $1.81 for new subscribers, home-delivered. With newsprint (that’s the paper, not the ink) costing around $750 a metric ton, or 34 cents a pound, Post subscribers are getting almost a dollar’s worth of paper free every week — not to mention the ink, the delivery, etc. The Times is more svelte and more expensive. It might even have a viable business model if it could sell the paper with nothing written on it. A more promising idea is the opposite: give away the content without the paper. In theory, a reader who stops paying for the physical paper but continues to read the content online is doing the publisher a favour.
Talk of micropayments goes back 10 years, Stephen Dubner points out in a different article for the New York Times. He quotes Marshall W. Van Alstyne, an associate professor in the Information Systems department at Boston University:
Putting micropayments on news is like putting tollbooths on an open ocean. Internet users, awash in a sea of information, will avoid new barriers by navigating around them. And frankly, the interests of a free society are rarely served by building barriers between the people and their news.
See also Micropayments won't save journalism in TechCrunch.
But a New Media Age survey found that 77 per cent of UK regular online readers were not prepared to pay for access to news websites. Many commentators doubt if online subscriptions are viable.
Micropayment is one solution on offer. Walter Isaacson, a former managing editor of Time says: a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.
Newspapers struggle to find an online business model that works
In today's Guardian, Frank Fisher says:
This needs a big player . . . Google already has the infrastructure and the reputation . . . Not only that, but they're touted as news content's No 1 enemy, via GoogleNews. They "owe" the press one.
Slate's founding editor, in a piece for the New York Times headed You can't sell news by the slice points out:
Newspaper readers have never paid for the content (words and photos). What they have paid for is the paper that content is printed on. A week of The Washington Post weighs about eight pounds and costs $1.81 for new subscribers, home-delivered. With newsprint (that’s the paper, not the ink) costing around $750 a metric ton, or 34 cents a pound, Post subscribers are getting almost a dollar’s worth of paper free every week — not to mention the ink, the delivery, etc. The Times is more svelte and more expensive. It might even have a viable business model if it could sell the paper with nothing written on it. A more promising idea is the opposite: give away the content without the paper. In theory, a reader who stops paying for the physical paper but continues to read the content online is doing the publisher a favour.
Talk of micropayments goes back 10 years, Stephen Dubner points out in a different article for the New York Times. He quotes Marshall W. Van Alstyne, an associate professor in the Information Systems department at Boston University:
Putting micropayments on news is like putting tollbooths on an open ocean. Internet users, awash in a sea of information, will avoid new barriers by navigating around them. And frankly, the interests of a free society are rarely served by building barriers between the people and their news.
See also Micropayments won't save journalism in TechCrunch.
Labels: Journalism, Publishing
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