52 Comments

  1. Yes I do find it “tasty” Thank you for your piece Laurel.

    I am in favor of “paid” as I do believe in the old conservative,’ There is no such thing as a free lunch,’ but I am not too enthusiastic about paywalls. There are better solution, both in terms of returns and user experience. Online revenue generated by paywalls must with time start slowing down (as the NYT is already feeling it; see http://bit.ly/qGiKLs); one user interested in many points of view will not subscribe to too many online publications — to name just a few obvious reasons.

    But there are many others. I will just say here that the right, sustainable digital content monetization model has to be WWW-open or platform-agnostic and on-demand, where users have the freedom and choice to surf many sources of info/news and pay as-they-surf, for what they consider relevant or valuable to them, preferably a few dimes at a time.

    There are such models and made-ready solutions availabel to anyone who care or has a business to monetize. More, some of them are SaaS, so they are free to implement and use. They do not require millions of up-front investment and years of programming.

  2. I was once having an interesting conversation with someone, when suddenly the person stopped and said “Look, I’m such a great conversationalist, I think you should pay me if we’re going to keep talking.” Of course, I realised the person was conceited and only interested in their own point of view. It is so counter-intuitive to imagine that ‘quality journalism’ is the only attraction to the interactive site they had at The Australian (for example) that I think it is a blunder. What about all the readers’ comments? Why would anyone pay for some of the rubbish and abuse that is left unmoderated in comments sections? This attempt to maintain an elite stance in a highly literate and mobile culture suddenly makes them (hopefully temporarily) strangers on the internet, which is a pity. It also might make their language and thoughts too exclusive to be of much democratic value, except as a crucible for political party rhetoric which might seep out some other way, perhaps through television. It seems as though News has just decided that it will go against the spirit of the internet for a few dollars. A great leap backwards in every way except possibly financially, I reckon.

  3. Thanks Laurel, interesting analysis. You are right, the rivers aren’t drying up. They are shifting. Power is shifting.

    News confuses their products. Murdoch made a commercial artform of page 3 girls and crass gutter tabloid journalism. Most of the contents of newspapers is crap. News corp now arrogantly claiming some journalistic high ground of quality for which we readers would happily pay is a little bit amusing and largely absurd.

    It would be interesting to know the price at which a newspaper would be sold if advertising was not subsidizing or contributing to it.

    As you rightly say, It would have been far smarter for News to develop communities. They are so caught up in not wanting to cannibalize their own businesses that they are easy prey for others.

    How many arms can an octopus lose before feeling pain? And at what point does the octopus die?

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