Comments on: ‘Will you pay for news?’ … ‘Hell, no!’

By: Jonathan Este

Jonathan Este — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:56:02 +0000

I’m with Matt, someone has to report the news and that generally means being paid. On reflection, if even a small percentage of news junkies is willing to pay for premium news content then it ought to be possible to sustain a newsroom of professional journalists.
I think the key will be giving value for money – how can the paid journalist make a difference that is worth my dollars (and micropayment cents)?
But I worry that lazy and unimaginative news executives will simply see paywalls as a way to keep doing what they’ve been doing and the public will continue to be turned off. If news is enhanced as a premium product and offers information, data and analysis of real use to people and their communities, as well as the chance to be part of a live community of discussion and ideas, then people may be willing to pay for it. I don’t see too many people doing that, just at the moment.

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:44:55 +0000

Bill: I agree that’s a good sign (anecdotally).

MNG *is* talking micropayments specifically; see the Denver Post story linked to above, as well as the informal DenverPost.com survey that also uses the term “micropayment.” From what I know, they are looking at all options, though it’s odd that their reporter would emphasize the micropayment one.

I still don’t see it happening. I predict that voluntary “memberships” that get the member special things (not necessarily content) will become more prevalent for individual sites or networks of sites (and affiliated mobile services) to support reporting and content creation.

And if news publishers start to lock down content, they’ll just invoke a consumer reaction similar to what the music industry saw with Napster, et al. We (millions of Internet users) have become accustomed to access to many sources of news with just a click or two. If a few publishers lock down, they’ll just be ignored; if lots of them do it, people will find ways to circumvent the pay systems.

By: Bill Densmore

Bill Densmore — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:20:18 +0000

Just about everytime I get on an airplane these days, I take the opportunity to do so market survey work on news and payments. I am finding more and more that when you pose this question: “If you began to see that the news you depend upon is going away because of financial problems in the industry, would you be willing to pay a few dollars a month to get a good package of news that matters to you online?” Invariable the answer is: “Yes.” That was not true even a year ago. The layoffs and bankruptcies are sending a message. Also, I don’t think MNG has talked about micropayments, per see. I think they have just talked generally about finding a way to invite people to pay for local content. There are a lot of options for that besides nickel and diming.

By: frankwolftown

frankwolftown — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:49:10 +0000

They could always do what the AP and Fox News wanna do. They could try and get money out of Google.

By: Christopher Ryan

Christopher Ryan — Fri, 15 May 2009 01:47:31 +0000

I’d like to see similar polling from the ’70s or ’80s when cable TV first arrived.

I’ll bet that a similarly overwhelming percent of people said they would never pay for TV. But look how things turned out…

(Don’t get me wrong — I’d love to see news websites remain free. But the free model just isn’t working…)

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:29:53 +0000

I wonder what will happen when people discover that Google doesn’t report news…

By: Adam Jav?rek

Adam Jav?rek — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:38:18 +0000

The biggest Czech newspaper MF DNES did a similar poll on its website.

Results: 12300 readers (97 %) said No, 390 said Yes…

By: Jim Buie

Jim Buie — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:20:18 +0000

May I glean some (perhaps naive) optimism from the unscientific web poll? An aggressive campaign to encourage readers to DONATE or give micropayments for journalism they find valuable might work. Even if only 10 percent of a heavily trafficked news website’s visitors were willing to pay $5 a month, that could help a great deal. Say a news web site like DenverPost.com attracts two million unique visitors a month. Say about 10%, or 200,000 can be persuaded to donate $5 a month — that’s a million dollars a month or $12 million dollars a year. Would that not be a good chunk of change to run a profitable news operation?

By: Suzanne Lainson

Suzanne Lainson — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:40:42 +0000

I’m a print subscriber, so as long as I can still get the print edition, I don’t really care. If they drop the print edition and want me to subscribe online only, I probably wouldn’t do it.