Over the weekend, I bought the Boston Globe off the newsstand for the first time in quite a while. The reason for buying the paper was this eye-catching headline: Times Co. threatens to shut Globe; seeks $20m in cuts from unions
I was shaking my head sadly at the irony of the situation as I was walking out the store. Maybe it was a gut reaction…the thought of losing the paper made me want to actually pay money for it for the first time in ages. Shelling out a mere 75 cents was the least I could do—a sort of tribute to an era gone by.
Indeed, people paying too little or nothing at all for content and online advertising has pretty well brought about the demise of newspapers in the US. The list of newspapers and magazines shrinking, on the brink of shutting down, going weekly, going online only etc etc is too long to type up here. The loss of newspapers should be thoroughly freaking you out now.
Or not. Online users have become so used to finding and accessing online content for free that perhaps some don’t really mind the loss of newspapers, because there will be other free content/websites to take their place. With so much free content out there, we’ve been overwhelmed and as a result, we’re losing the ability, or just don’t have the time or energy, to differentiate good content from bad. Voting/recommending/sharing/tagging tools online will only do so much.
So with the glut of free content, the online culture that says that everything should be free, and the perception that good content is worth as much as bad content (ie not much at all) online, could we ever go back to asking people to pay for the good stuff they read online?
If the genie is way too far out of the bottle, what is left to do? Turn journalism into a nonprofit enterprise? Just not have newspapers and well trained, tough-nosed journalists to put in the time and work needed to keep politicians and companies in line, to look out for us little people? The mere thought scares and saddens me.
Maybe we should do some market research before giving up.
What kind of content would you pay for online? Anything?
Nothing.
Let me refine this. I would not pay for any content online. But I will pay for stuff via a webpage. In other words, I will pay for goods and services, but not for information.
I would pay for the option to not see ads on a website that otherwise has to fund its free content with ridiculous amounts of advertising.
I would pay voluntarily. I have done that before – put your PayPal button up and if you write something really good and useful, I’ll hit it.
I’m not in the habit of paying to read stuff online but nor am I ready to give up buying a regular newspaper. Reading from the screen is no match for the simple pleasure of sitting down with the paper at the weekend – which is usually the only time I have to do it. A nice cup of coffee adds to the effect.
When I was growing up my Dad bought three papers a day – two in the morning, The Irish Times and The Guardian_, and one (_The Belfast Telegraph) that was delivered to the house in the evening. That must be where I got my taste for reading the paper but I have not been able to sustain that level of activity in my own adulthood. The Guardian on a Saturday is my treat and I would be loathe to see it disappear.
I browse daily papers in our restaurant area at coffee breaks, otherwise I too am fond of the Guardian on Saturday. I haven’t yet got round to reading papers online, other than for a specific article that I want to read. If I’m going to pay for something online then I’ll need it to be a more satisfying experience than it is now.
I don’t think I subscribe to anything “online only” but I subscribe or buy newspapers and magazines, not all for me personally: for example The Times (daily), and weekly: The Economist, BBC History, some TV guide or other, “First News”, The Week, The Bookseller. I get a free copy of Nature (my perk;-) ) . Almost all of these have websites but I rarely visit them (apart from Nature’s ;-).)
I think it is a great pity that people don’t buy newspapers any more because even though quite a bit of a standard newspaper may not be good, there is a good hour or so of content worth reading in one of them, if you count the crossword. I have ranted before about the “free papers” which litter London’s transport system and which everyone reads, killing the “proper” newspapers. When they have done their job and the real newspapers are all dead, these grim facsimiles of parasitism will be our empty reward.
In sum: if it is quality, it is worth paying for, whatever it is but especially if it involves reading and provokes thought in the brain of the reader.
Methinks some perspective is necessary here – newspapers have been in decline for decades, long before teh interwebz existed. I think that they’ll always be there in some form or another, because people want in-depth content that’s not so well-presented online, and to be able to read something in their
shedallotmentgothic porn dungeonbath at the weekends. After all, people once said that TV would kill off cinemas, but moviegoing is as vibrant as ever it was. TV and cinema are two different media, with different conventions, and approached differently by audiences.Maxine wrote
I have ranted before about the “free papers” which litter London’s transport system and which everyone reads, killing the “proper” newspapersHowever, The London Paper (free) is produced by News International (which produces The Times, The Sun etc.), and London Lite (free) and Metro (free) are both published by Associated Newspapers, producers of the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard. Presumably these companies see diversification as a way to shore up decreasing paid-for sales as they often flag readers to articles to the paid content in their
weightierless celeb-fluffy publications.I’ve been reading them for a looong time now – I guess just living abroad and trying to somewhat keep up with what’s going on in ‘the other country’ would do that.
I would love to say that I would be happy to pay for online content – if it is really good – but, if I’m honest, actually doing it and signing up for things has been low on my priority list for a long time… at the very least we need a big change in culture – and we’re still a long way from it.
Generally speaking, I won’t pay for online content. If something pops up requiring a subscription (New York Times, I’m lookin’ at you), my general reaction is to go back to Google and choose the next link along.
Maxine’s revisitation of her rant about the free newspapers is interesting – this jumped to my mind as well. Metro is pervasive here, too, and the quality of the
journalismedited snippets taken from newswirescrapnewsah, I give up, I can’t describe it, let’s call it “writing”, is, in a word, pants. Badly edited (how many times have I come across quote from someone referred to only by their last name, without any prior indication as to who the person might be?) and sometimes even incoherent.But – it’s still preferable to paying for a “real” newspaper, at least to a cheapskate like me. As is accessing “free” content online.
I do like Eva’s idea of opt-in payment to get rid of advertisements, though.
it’s still preferable to paying for a “real” newspaper
That’s amazing! After what you just said, with a real newspaper costing less than a pound, you’d prefer to read the, er, what you called it. I am genuinely stumped!
Eva’s idea already is a business model – eg Yahoo and Google allow you to build a free website with ads, but you pay if you don’t want the ads.
I meant “I’ve been reading online newspapers and magazines…” up there, of course.
Generally, I find that – at least right now (still) – a lot of freely available online content is rather good. And I don’t have too much trouble ignoring the ads, unless they’re the bouncy ones or they change in size or wander around. Which are getting more common. Here is a good (i.e. very annoying) example. Almost makes me want to pay to make it go away.
Back to square one…
Maxine – it’s the idea of paying that pound (more or less) for something that will not last longer than a brief train ride, when t’internets is full of news anyway that I can access for free.
Besides, and I suspect this point is arguable, it might just be more environmentally friendly to run a computer for half an hour and read the news there, than to buy that paper and have someone expend the energy picking it up from the blue box, haul it to the depot and recycle it.
I’d like to see that analysis done, actually, because I have no idea which would be better.
I think 90 p is good value for my inward bound commute, and it does not cover the 4 or 5 puzzles. But, takes all sorts.
Talking of enviromentally friendly, though, one of my many beefs with those freebies is how everyone who picks one up does not regard him or herself as its “owner”, so one has to wade through festering heaps of the things left behind on seats, floors, etc…oh, don’t get me started ;-)
One can always recycle one’s newspaper as hamster bedding, which is much harder to do with online news.
Maxine – agreed. On the local commuter trains, they’ve had to resort to adding the phrase “including newspapers” to the standard end-of-trip exhortation to “please ensure you take all of your personal belongings”. Predictably, coffee cups are also explicitly mentioned.
Henry – or budgie cage lining. Online news doesn’t have quite the absorptive qualities, I find.
I’ve been intrigued by the idea of employing the BBC model to investigative journalism. I wouldn’t pay for news online and I’m certain that most people wouldn’t either (but like Bora I do pay voluntarily for useful websites and for independent news like Democracy Now). But if there were a similar sales tax that goes into an untouchable fund, managed by a foundation for investigative journalism, then newspaper journalists could continue getting the scoop without political or economic interference. Furthermore, if newspapers would move towards a non-profit status they could receive additional support. Sure, they would have to give up their endorsements of certain candidates or ballot initiatives, but so what? I was always uncomfortable with newspapers endorsing political positions anyway. Let people inform themselves and make up their own mind. Now, if we could only apply this model to cable news we could do away with the ridiculous scrawls on FOX News and the increasingly shrill MSNBC.
OK, I was tested, and I succumbed I found something I am willing to pay for, but for a number of interesting reasons that are not universally applicable to everyone and every kind of content.