Two days ago I wrote a piece about the fuss around news content online and some plans to make it paid for. It considered the rise and fall of one business model that presumed media outlets online will fund themselves from advertising. The article grew and mushroomed into a three-parter, of which part 2 comes today. For the purpose of this second part it is enough to say that if Rupert Murdoch, who has been dropping the price of The Sun (in top ten of world’s largest newspapers by circulation) rather often in the bid for mass audience, is planning to make his content paid for – the advertising model must be on its last legs. The question is: what happens now?
Will people actually pay for news online enough to sustain the media industry? An important differentiation must be made here. Having a paywall around online content has been no trouble for some newspapers – such as Wall Street Journal. WSJ’r readers have rather deep pockets and paying for good economy news coverage and comment is simply an investment. And here is the clue: WSJ has specialist who’s opinion is unique and matters – therefore it has content that cannot be found anywhere else. For such news outlets the question is a bit easier: content is unique, but will the readers care enough to pay?
Not so easy with general news. If Murdoch suddenly decides to announce his strategic moves a year in advance he must be counting on the rest of the industry to follow. This is a risky bid, especially in UK, where there is always BBC, one of word’s most potent news networks which as far as the current legislation goes is and will remain free. Granted the BBC might not have shocking pics of one or the other celebrity who gained weight or cheated on their significant other, but how much is the gossip really worth?
Another diffrentiation here: if paying for news online is to have any chance of becoming a norm it has to be easy enough to become a daily routine. For some audiences, more than for others, this is still a no go area. I have no numbers to support this, but I would bid some money on the fact, that paying online is more of a habit for the readers of The Guardian, than for majority of readers of The Sun. Charlie Brooker (as usually) has a point – Rupert better makes this easy and attractive.
How could this look like? There are few models, which already operate: subscription to whole or parts of the content, paying for access to the archive, pay-per-article, paying for premium content or additional features. While the first two are rather simple, the latter two pose more problems: who’s to decide what is premium? And how does one pay per article/video/audio without setting up tens of accounts for each newspaper, giving away credit card and personal details each time – something we all hate and have no time for? Some sort of newspaper iTunes? But then we’d need a newspaper iPod.
I am a rather regular Guardian reader and I used to buy the print version regularly when I was living in London, mainly because it was available in my College (which was also my work) shop and I got it together with my morning coffee. I also like the ritual of reading my morning paper and despite being in my twenties I’d rather not read off the screen if I can avoid it – it’s enough to stare at it hours no end while I work. This stopped for several reasons: disposing of huge amounts of paper became a pain in just about everything, I started working from home a lot and I had to cut back on caffeine. Finally I moved abroad and that was the end of it. Now I am the perfect customer: give me an attractive access online and I will pay the equivalent of 1.20 GBP to read what I read now in my RSS feeds for free – for the attractiveness.
The attractiveness of a printed newspaper to me is that I can start at the beginning and finish at the end, making sure I don’t miss anything that might be of interest. Jumping around guardian.co.uk proves a bit too much. There is too much content. So say I receive a daily email asking if I feel like buying the paper today. If I do can pay with one click and get all the pages put together rather nicely (make it a .pdf if you don’t have a better idea), but hey – lay them out just for me. It’s rather easy to analyze my reading habits and interests (google ads tries all the time, though it doesn’t have much success). I like the world news section, sports, culture and media news, reportage part in the g2, books reviews. I couldn’t care less for cooking, gardening, travel or work advice – not very much for the comment section either. So stash that at the end (just in case there’s something interesting I will look through the summaries). And while we’re at it give me the links to relating podcasts (I would pay for Guardian’s MediaTalk, as I consider it to be one of the best media podcasts available and I’m interested in the opinion of its usual guests – but then again, I am in the industry). Done, that’s £1.20 for The Guardian Media Group from me.
But that’s me – and what about any one else?
Stay tuned for part 3 on Tuesday to find out how media industry can incorporate ‘citizen’ journalists, regroup and perhaps keep some of the jobs. If we’re lucky…