Why Pay When You Can Get it for Free
With news agencies searching for strategies to keep the money flowing despite large losses and diminishing ad dollars, talk of charging for on-line news is being heard from even the big sources like the New York Times and Newsday. But maybe what these papers need are not ways to charge for news, but some kind of sugar daddy that makes the money so the papers can give the news away for free.
In January, Times exec editor, Bill Keller, held an open discussion with readers regarding the newspaper’s plans to charge for on-line content. You may recall the Times charged for columns and archive information for a period of time, and it generated $10 Million a year, but the company decided it could reach more readers (and bring in more ad dollars) if they allowed everyone to read the news for free. Keller suggests that perhaps what they put behind the firewall wasn’t the right information so now they’re considering other options.
“A lot of people in the news business, myself included, don’t buy as a matter of theology that information “wants to be free.” Really good information, often extracted from reluctant sources, truth-tested, organized and explained — that stuff wants to be paid for.”
It wants to be paid for? You mean, like, taken on a date?
It’s not so much that information wants to be free, but we want it to be free.
Because news is happening all the time, and changes by the second, it’s hard to capture it long enough to charge someone for. If the Times starts charging for news, what stops me from going to CNN.com or just turning on the TV?
The top three pay models the Times is considering include pay-per-read, subscriptions, and some sort of pain-in-the-neck reading device like Kindle. No way I’m getting pimped into buying a Kindle just to read the NYT—or any other reader for that matter—or any other newspaper.
Last week Newsday announced its plans to cease giving news away for free as well. They haven’t given details on plans—but it might have something to do with Cable TV subscriptions.
“When we purchased Newsday we were aware of the long-term issues facing the traditional newspaper industry,” Rutledge said. “Our goal was, and is, to use our electronic network assets and subscriber relationships to transform the way news is distributed,” he said. “We plan to end distribution of free Web content and to make our news gathering capabilities service our customers,” Rutledge added.
If advertising on Cable TV is still profitable, why not just charge a little more and give advertisers space on the web site, too—and keep the news free.
A healthy foundation of support
Keller of the Times refers to The Guardian when a reader suggests perhaps a foundation such as the one NPR has might help support the paper and keep news free. The Guardian is considered a success story among newspapers that moved from print-only to an on-line presence, but even it has been losing money. However, The Guardian has more than just a trust supporting it.
Op-ed writer Stephen Glover, has an interesting piece in The Independent about what really keeps The Guardian and sister-paper, the Observer “recession-proof.”
“. . . the two papers have been buttressed by the considerable profits of the Trader Media Group, which publishes Auto Trader, the motoring classified ads title.”
(Coincidentally, he has another op-ed about why he thinks US papers are worse off than the ones in the UK.)
But Auto Trader is not the only thing buttressing The Guardian and keeping it protected from the recession. In 2004, the Guardian launched its own dating service, Soulmates and in just a few short months had 20,000 subscribers. Now it has about 110,000 members with subscriptions running at about 35 bucks a month (L24.95)
In this recession, folks may not be spending money on newspapers, but they are looking for love online like guppies. Major online dating services like Match.com and eHarmony.com are reporting double-digit surges on their sites since December 08, and at times a direct relationship between what happens on Wall Street and what daters are doing.
“On days when the Dow went down by 100 points we found an increase in our site usage relative to when the Dow increased by 100 points,” says Gian Gonzaga, a senior research scientist for dating website eHarmony.
Following suit, another popular (with a certain crowd) British paper, The Daily Mail launched a dating service of its own this year, MailDating, hoping to draw more like-minded people to its site.
So maybe what newspapers really need is some kind of cash cow like Soulmates to keep afloat and keep the news flowing free. Like maybe celebrity rehab advice subscriptions with Dr Drew or pay-per-view of the Octomom’s birth tape.
Any other ideas?
