why i’ll pay for papers
the fictional Baltimore Sun newsroom, season five of The Wire
You don’t need to work in PR, or have been a journalist, or be involved with all things digital to know about the furore around paying for online newspapers and journalism. So the fact lust that all three apply to me might mean I have different views Community? in this area to most people. But should the Guardian, Times, Brand Republic and, yes, even the Daily Mail, go behind a paywall tomorrow, I’d be happily paying. I can’t speak for the rest of the team here, so this is very much a personal post. I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot lately. You can’t pass a day, if you’re interested in this stuff, without reading another survey on the likelihood of paywalls being successful, or about Rupert Murdoch’s latest plans. And the more I think about it, the more I realise that online news – reading it, interacting with it, sharing it – is something I couldn’t do without, and that quality journalism is worth paying for. News is currency in social discussion places like Twitter – reading the links that friends recommend every morning means I find out what’s going on and see the world through a filter of interesting people. Not being able to read that information would make my life immeasurably poorer. I also think that reading online can be a richer experience. I buy the Monday Guardian for the Media section, but I read Charlie Brooker online, simply because the snarky, funny comments below the article are as much a part of the experience as the writing itself. The paper version doesn’t come with annotations. The idea that ISO I’d be able to go elsewhere and get the news for free just doesn’t wash either. Someone needs to be paid for doing that. Blogs are great, but somewhere, someone needs to write the story that bloggers can comment on. You can’t keep doing that for free. The latest thing to really make me sure Quietly of this opinion was the recent news from Haymarket, my former employer. 33rd Readers are going online and online ads just aren’t bringing in the money, with the sad result that a third of the staff in the section of Haymarket that houses Campaign and BrandRepublic are to lose their jobs. At the moment, I buy one or two issues of the Guardian or the Times a week to read over lunch, plus a Sunday paper. We get the FT in the office (which of course, already has a very good paywall, giving you 30 free issues a month before asking for money), and get other papers too though not every day. But the majority, I read online. If I was paying for news, I’d still buy the weekend papers – and in fact, I’d probably still buy an issue or two as well (I can’t read online in a cafe with my terribly mobile phone, though nor would I want to). So my personal expenditure on papers is somewhere around £6 a week, or £312 a year. This is more than I spend on my mobile phone contract, and I could never manage without that. I don’t know what I’d be willing to pay for online access, but given the figures above, I could probably work out my tolerance, given half an hour and a calculator. Rules In a Signage way, I think there had to be a period of ‘free’, or people wouldn’t have got so used to the luxurious, immediate interactivity of online news. But now payment has to happen, or we won’t have any news at all. And everyone has to the do it. I really hope it works. But I know, and worry that most people don’t see it this way.
November 25, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
Sky has a stranglehold on sports fans who will always pay a premium for content they cannot get elsewhere.
The problem News Int has is that if offers very little – certainly online – that cannot be sourced for free elsewhere. While I’m sure people will still fork out for the paper edition of The Sun, the idea that they will (also) pay for online content seems like very wishful thinking on the part of Murdoch. Because there are a plethora of free gossip, celeb pic sites etc. and no matter how vehemently Murdoch tries to defend his copyright, the nub of any story that appears in one of his rags can quite legitimately be reproduced elsewhere. In fact, I imagine there will be a surge of new sites offering this sort of (re)rehashed news as soon as more media owners start charging for online.
And The Times. It too will still have its paper-faithful, but quite frankly, unlike its trashy tabloid sister, its content has little edge or exclusivity.
Your point about comments and the interactivity of online content is an interesting and valid one; but, and it’s a big BUT, is the ability to comment on stories really reason enough to make people pay? Also, a lot of the comments appear to be made by a small group of regulars, too few to drive revenues.
As an aside, it is ironic that The Times recently lifted a tribute to the late Edward Woodward from a blog by Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright without permission; as, in effect, that it exactly what people will be doing with News Int content once it becomes paid (or rather charged) for.
I do however think there is one viable means of charging for online/digital content, as do some senior bods at media agencies. And that is charging (perhaps on a annual sub basis) for content downloadable to an eReader. So in effect you pay for the paper in digital form, minus the costs associated with print. But these eReaders are currently in their first or second gen infancy and it’ll take a while for their price to come down and for people to adopt them.