“ But no one yet has unlocked the puzzle of supporting a large newsroom purely on digital revenue, a fact that may presage an era of news organizations that are smaller, weaker and less able to fulfill their traditional function as the nation’s watchdog.”
For Papers, a Downsizing Trickle Becomes a Flood - NYTimes.com
Continuing on this topic, the only viable solution for the survival of newspapers is microcharging.
Solely relying on ad revenue to run a newspaper is not only unprofitable (and obviously not working), but it is damaging to the entire industry, as editors are forced to please the advertisers rather than please (and inform) the public.
Despite appearances, people will pay (a fair price) for good journalism. We need to return to a model of payment for quality, rather than an expectation of things being free or for the “common good”. The only rational way to do this on the Internet is to start charging readers a fair and reasonable rate, either on a per-article basis, or on a subscription basis, the same way one could subscribe to a newspaper or buy one that day.
I’d even go as far as saying that the current print/online model should be reversed: print should be free, while online content should be paid for. After all, what’s more valuable? The printed paper, while great to touch and smell and hold over coffee, is still discarded daily. If you want to share an article with your friend, you have to physically bring them your issue of the paper (or much more likely, find the same article online and e-mail it to them). If you want to find an old article, you have to dig through your trash pile, unless it’s already gone. Whereas online, everything is archived, everything is sharable with a few clicks, and those using an article for research can copy and paste a quote straight into their essay, no re-typing necessary. If newspapers were to make enough to cover their costs entirely from their online readers, they could print a set number of physical newspapers as a kind of marketing tool, in the hopes that someone who picks up a free copy of their paper at the grocery store will eventually become an online subscriber.
The main obstacle to this model that I foresee is the mp3 phenomenon: people find a way to share content for free (and copy-pasting text is much easier than ripping a CD). But the solution to this is the iTunes model - make the articles so affordable that trying to get them for free seems unnecessary. Also, just as music fans understand that by buying an artist’s album, they are supporting them and allowing them to continue to make music, readers would understand that by paying for articles, they are supporting journalists and newspapers as a whole, and allowing them to continue to present objective journalism that is unhindered by a need to please advertisers/cater to the lowest common denominator.
