Free news: You’ll get (eventually) what you paid
February 5th, 2009 at 05:30pm Linda Grist Cunningham
I paid a lot of my college tuition and living expenses by lifeguarding, teaching swimming lessons and coaching a swim team. It was great for suntans and exercise, lousy for its requirement that I clean public bathrooms three times a day, and a superb testbed for learning economic lessons.
Biggest ah-ah moment: If swim lessons are free, no one shows up. If we charge a quarter a lesson, everyone comes every time on time — and pays.
Weird, huh? Not so much, as I learned by asking the kids and their parents: Why pay if you can get it for free? Because, they said, when the lessons are free, they aren’t worth much. When I pay, well, it’s a commitment and it matters.
People do counter-intuitive things, and despite our arguments to the contrary, when it’s free, we figure there’s not much value, even if there is. So, what happens when all news is free? When you don’t pay for news online? When your newspaper (assuming there still is one) is free? When your magazine (ditto) is free?
Will there still be value? I’m predicting not. Gathering, sorting, ranking and delivering news, information and advertising is jaw-droppingly expensive. No one will do those things for free (a la bloggers or social networking) for very long. The work is just too hard. So, as the demand for “free” news increases, the quality of news will decrease proportionately.
A reader, unhappy because she wasn’t getting as much local news as she wanted, once asked me why she should have to pay for her subscription when she could just go online and read it for “free.” My answer was blunt: Because if you don’t pay for news in some fashion, then someday there will be no news.
Here’s a fascinating (albeit long) column from Time Magazine on the same topic, but with lots of solutions. Enjoy.
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized
5 Comments Add your own
1. Curtis Newport | February 6th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Well, go ahead then, Linda.
Require a subscription for this website.
The Wall Street Journal charges two bucks a week.
2. Drew Williams | February 6th, 2009 at 7:18 am
If a daily .pdf file was available that included all the same content as the print edition, including coupons, I would happily pay close to full subscription price for it. But I understand creating such a thing would be troublesome for the business because such a file could be easily emailed in mass quantities to your friends. Thus, one person pays, many people benefit from the service.
One way to circumvent that problem would be to lock the pdf file with a password. Sallie Mae requires me to enter a combination of my account number and social security number to read pdf billing statements they have sent me. Users are probably less willing to forward the file in email to their friends if they know they have to include their soc sec number with the attachment.
Of course, the other option is to charge for online content. This is probably inevitable at some point. The key is trying to figure out what news is freely available online, and what to charge for. You obviously want to attract and retain online readers on a daily basis, yet there may be an opportunity to charge for high quality information that no other news service is capable of providing. Its a weighty and difficult process to say the least.
Good luck.
3. Linda Grist Cunningham | February 6th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Thanks, Drew and Curtis. Both worthy suggestions. And, Drew, your pdf model not only exists, we use it. Ten years ago the technology was pretty primitive, but today, it’s easy to do and protect. We are experimenting with the “e-edition” right now in some of our schools and with our out-of-state subscribers. I, too, have a “test subscription” to it, and I have to say, I love it. Especially when I am out of town. I suspect once we get more comfortable with its potential, we’ll extend its availability.
As for charging or subscriptions for online….. I’m wrestling with that, but I do think that if I were honest about it, that’s what must happen. Yes, total numbers of users may go down, but the resulting high-demographic, must-have-my-news user would ensure higher quality reporting, etc.
Stay tuned. The models are changing by the minute ….
4. the dude abides | February 6th, 2009 at 10:13 am
PS:
There are extremely easy ways to subvert locked PDF files.
Opening them in Adobe, Word, or many other programs, then changing the name/saving as a different file, removes any copy protection.
5. Jim Phelps | February 8th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
I personally prefer the model the WSJ adopted where part of the story is visible for non-subscribers, but the total content and the ablity to send the story to non-subscribers is available with a paid subscription to either the paper/electronic or just electronic copy.
Der Spiegel’s stories are available in a nearly complete but much shortened form with less detail for free. If you want an indepth expose in either digital print or video, it is available only by pay-per-single use, a very cumbersome and not very customer centric idea… but very German and naturally culturally acceptable to the primary readership.
I like the idea of opening up my web enable communiation device (iPhone, Laptop, Netbook, cell phone) and be able to read the news in near real time on my bus ride down to 7th Street.
Whoever had the best local content and got their first would have a wack at getting my subscription money.
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