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Which services are we really willing to pay for? Ever since the internet found its way into our homes, there have been debates about free and paid content. The problem: Unlike physical products we can touch and use, online services feel quite intangible. And while most of us have free or cheap access to music, thanks to YouTube and streaming services, publishing companies are unwilling to give up the fight just yet. Currently, subscription-based paywalls are their weapon of choice, but the majority of users are not amused! So what should successful online journalism look like?
When I was young, everything was much simpler. My parents had subscribed to the local newspaper and a weekly magazine that covered more important issues with deeper analyses. This setup pretty much covered everything from the local dog breeders' club to global politics. The weekend edition frequently weighed up to a pound so subscribers could actually feel what they spent their money on. Subscriptions had been the way to go for over 20 years and nobody ever thought about alternatives because there was no competition. That articles were always one day old barely mattered. This went on for many years until the world got smaller and more information-dense!
Nowadays, yesterday's news are old hat and hyperlinks or Google Search help quickly expand on a topic. Publishing companies took notice and felt the consequences: Sales are down by up to 80% and smaller publishers either went out of business, merged with rivals or significantly cut down their staff. The initial strategy of offering a handful of online articles for free to foster print sales has failed. The internet took on a life of its own and, while full-fledged lead articles still remain mostly absent, there are now a myriad of free news outlets available. Naturally, readers quickly warmed up and kicking back in your favorite chair while swiping through today's multimedia-enriched news on your tablet has become part of the morning routine for many – newspapers are a nice to but not a must have!
What has been giving publishers worry crinkles lately is their customers' payment morale. A recent poll shows only 60 percent would consider paying for journalistic content online. 30 percent believe digital content should be free. Publishers also tend to overestimate the potential revenue generated by ads. When taking into account that 50% of users are already paying for streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime, the picture becomes even more complex. Apparently, users are making a strong distinction between entertainment (worth paying for) and news, considered by many hardly subscription-worthy. As an educated citizen, I find this shocking! Still, it's too early to pass the buck to the readers.
In many cases, the transition into the digital age didn't go smoothly for publishers. Readers are frequently exposed to confusing payment models, technical issues and uninspired designs. Some publishers are resorting to loud and flashy headlines or bizarre exaggerations to woo customers. On top, prices are simply thought as too high by many readers. Why would you pay almost the same amount for an online or PDF edition that you'd pay for the print version when publishers save big on print, distribution and logistics costs? Many publishers have significantly cut down their editorial staff and it shows! Sure, it is possible for a newspaper to exist solely on agency reports with as little self-contribution as possible, but that's certainly no recipe to wean readers into your brand. Sites that offer the bare informational minimum are a dime a dozen and so are entertainment portals. Readers long for personally relevant, curated information.
While some are predicting the end of traditional publishing houses altogether, others demand a profound change in thinking. There are ideas to bundle and offer several papers at a fixed price, a model that has had some success in the magazine market. A "Netflix" for news may win over skeptics and stimulate sales. But long-lasting disputes between the various publishers are a serious roadblock and there are fears that the perceived value of individual papers could suffer greatly if offered as part of a bundle. Doubters like to point out the underwhelming success of music portals and the meager royalty fees. Other magazines try to offer more current news or provide their readers with trenchant daily recaps and exclusive content, like videos or comprehensive in-depth articles. Still others abandoned print altogether and focus on their online presence – with yet uncertain results.
These surely are exciting times for journalism. My hope is that we'll still have access to a diverse and varied media landscape in the future. After all, no functioning democracy can exist on a mere handful of, sometimes government-controlled, news outlets alone. And what would cozy weekend mornings be without local news?
What I would like to know: Are you prepared to pay for online news? Do you already have a subscription?
Yes and yes. I am prepared to pay and I already subscribe to my favourite quality newspaper. As a keen political observer I value this very highly.
From RSS feeds and updates, I get up to the minute summaries of the latest situations immediately, with hyperlinks to point me in the direction of other more in depth or specialised articles that I can reference at will. Much easier than rustling through large broadsheet pages searching for what may or may not be there.
That said, I am still averse to paying out for the print edition if the fancy takes me.
Quality journalism is definitely worth paying for.
News is news and I'm not willing to pay for it..
на початку користування у інтернеті підписувався на усі новини.з часом завів кілька поштових скриньок у які приходять різні по важливості повідомлення. але другий кінець цієї палиці-відсутність спілкування між самими людьки, тим же поштарем та звичайним пересічним мешканцем. є інформація, але є і самотність.якось так.
Free is always nice.
The "problem" with paying for news or information, is that they have advertising on the content you are paying for (page). So why pay for the content if you have to be bothered by ads?
Ads, pop ups, cookies, tracking, you get the same thing if it's free, so what's the gain?
They need to offer more for the fee. Deeper research on the subject (links) would be good. No ads, certainly no streaming ads, those are the worst!
I tried it once, & couldn't find where I left off reading, frustrating. The tracking didn't help, because I wanted to go on to something different by that time.
Yes, it should be free.
Its same news everyday.
The likes of the BBC and ITV, and others, provide (nominally) free news which is enough for me to keep up to date with the majority of headline subjects. I also grab a copy of the free Metro newspaper during the week.
Those who already read the heavyweight newspapers - even the now tabloid Times - may well feel it practical to pay for the same thing online, but for me, it is much more troublesome to read anything other than short pieces on a tablet than to hold a newspaper - so no, I have no reason to subscribe to an online service which I probably wouldn't have time to read anyway.
The trouble is no one trusts the main stream media any more, irrespective of whether it is newsprint or broadcast. In most cases they are seen as no more than an extension of the establishment, dishonest, manipulating and to be honest just plain fake. Gone are the days of the principled news reporter who fearlessly dug out corruption and dishonesty in government, business and elsewhere. Now they are just university clones all of the same political persuasion, shallow, weak, pampered and irrelevant. They all exist in the same bubble, reinforcing each others out of touch views, too quick to copy each other and scared to step out of line for fear of what it might do to their invariably left wing liberal safety net. I can't remember the last time I bought a newspaper and I stopped watching the 'unbiased' BBC and Sky ages ago, I'm quite happy to get my news free off the internet from a variety of sources and work out for myself what true and what isn't, at least that way, rightly or wrongly, I get to form my own opinions and not hold someone else's.
In order to substantiate my earlier comments on the subject of news trustworthyness I offer this quote by actor Russell Crow on the same subject.
Stuff.co.nz. 4 July 2019
Are you a news junkie?
I've grown up with the habit of morning newspapers but it's been a long time since I've been able to trust anything written in a paper. I look at my own experience and go, 'Right, if they are prepared to say that about me, then everything else is made up too'.
Sometimes they'll say, 'Here he is in a New York nightclub' when I've been on my farm with my horses and it's that clear – the difference of any level of truth with just the need to have a story about a particular person
A problem with online news is that if your identity is known, a service tends to track what articles you read and then feeds you material biased to what you LIKE, not just what you might read. This leads to getting a one-sided view of events. If you read news randomly on the internet, with your identity unknown, such modelling of what news is fed to you can't occur. Of course you then must be very critical of the veracity of everything you read, whereas with a subscription service, to retain customers that service must feed reliable news information ─ or at least that is what one might hope!
The Major TV stations such CBS,NBC and local stations should all be free ! all you need to do is turn on your TV.
So why Pay for the information redible now !
They used to say 'Today's newspaper is tomorrow's fish wrapper' but the truth was always that it is 'yesterday's news is tomorrow's fish wrapper.'
In this age of instant detailed news available via the web, the model of the traditional news 'paper' is a dead man walking.
Whatever the new model is, I will never pay for it online. There is no publishing and delivery cost and the web sites for news services are full of advertising and click bait and that should provide the source of the income to run the news delivery online.
It isn't free online news that is dragging down the newspapers, it is the fact that they are propping up a dead model and trying to get the new model users to pay for it.
I still subscribe to my local paper, the best thing about today is when my print edition gets wet I can still read the online version, I am the same way with books I don't own a e reader I like printed books better.
I bemoan the loss of so many small local newspapers who don’t have the wherewithal to compete in the world of instant news via the Internet and cable news. I do subscribe to two major newspapers, my local Las Vegas Review Journal and the New York Times. While I don’t mind paying for what I consume it seems to me that since the Internet breaks down time and space and is so ubiquitous that I can’t help but wonder why not attempt another method of charging, e.g. instead of 100 people at $5.00 per month, how about 1000 at 50 cents per month (reduced numbers used for ease of addition). Or charge only pennies on article that the consumer reads. In any case it's all automated and should not cost more to add volume.
Yes it should be free, but even more importantly it should be the truth and non-bias. Which we haven't had for several years. I don't trust the normal media and their insidious hate values.
If journalism would stick to the facts and report the truth consistently enough then I would consider to pay for news. But, with the amount of trash, lies, and fiction published today it is not worth it. A large amount of it should be catalogued in the library under fiction. When truth comes back to journalism then it should be called journalism. Until then, it just poor fiction.
I gave reading news papers years ago the same recycle crap over and over. Besides most paywalls are client side which are easily circumvented.
Many news services comment on the fact that I use an ad-blocker; my attitude is, "If I wanted to see ads, I'd buy a TV."
You mentioned that some publishers have reduced editorial staff; long before this conflict, they seem to have merged editorial and reporting departments, so that every article became a politically slanted editorial. The "news" is no longer news - it's a political statement. On-line, I read half a dozen "papers" to get a more balanced view, but even that doesn't work well; the media began to swing leftward decades ago, and now the teachers in schools of journalism are overwhelmingly socialists, teaching socialism and pretending it's journalism. My comments handle, "totherightofattilathehun" probably explains why I'm most comfortable with Fox News (I don't pay them, either) and "Canadian Conservatives" (a Facebook site which doesn't expect payment).
How has the Guardian become so successful ? Donations only ? No payments asked for. One can send them a €5 donation once a year and still get classy reporting. My 'local' rags want to charge me to read their stuff online, so I don't bother. I have not bought a printed newspaper for many years, and I don't think I'm missing anything.
The word free - is our shrodinger's cat the independence suggested in it's remit only exists as an aspiration not an actuality. We all have to give to get, the giving and the getting span reams of disparate denominations composed of waves and particles going both ways.
Where is the real exchange rate non negotiatable and a wave of categorical suppositions are made to present themselves as a truism to be -THE- singular actuality. Civilisation can never be duty free.
We are forced to watch so many commercials today to gain access to almost anything, that the reality of the product is lost to the desire for MORE MONEY! MORE MONEY, MORE CONTROL, MORE MONEY, the less you get and before long, LIKE YOU TUBE, it becomes a commercial interrupted by Music and information. ONLY A VERY FEW places left in America that are their to get the truth out. In fact, on you tube, they interfere with even the music they play. Now they charge you more money to listen to the music, with the 10 commercials, of some sort, per video. FACEBOOK, has proved that, THEIR MESSAGE, THEIR IDEALS, THEIR OPINIONS, matter more than the truth, freedom, and equality. It's a political tool, using all our information against us. No different than the east German Stazi. who used the same information before computers took over to find those opposed to their ideals and values. It started in a Socialist country and now, your information is used against you, allowing for commercial and social attacks against it's enemies. In this case, American Citizens. We should pay for that?
This a hard question to answer for me. I stopped watching the news and getting a newspaper years ago because most of the news articles were full of negativity. I liked it when Yahoo first started when they had a bunch of news stories to choose from and you could pick the stories that you wanted to read based on the headline, it is sad that they don't do that anymore. If I knew that I could find something similar and feel assured that the news being reported is unbiased I would pay for a subscription as long as the price was reasonable and there wasn't ads on the page. One of the current issues I face is that since I use an ad blocker so many newspaper on-line sites pop up a message telling you to either turn off your ad blocker or pay for a subscription before allowing you to read the article that interested you enough to click the link to read the full story. The few times I did turn off my ad blocker to read the article the page space was filled with more ads than the space the article took up and the article was very lacking in details to qualify as a news story.
I won't be paying for online news, I might as well by a Newspaper or Magazine, so it is NO for me!
As a retired journalist it has been quite dismaying to watch the steady decline of printed newspapers and magazines in North America, and my sympathy goes out to someone who has just completed their seven year pursuit of a masters degree in journalism and the best they are offered is a 2 cents a word job in a free community newspaper. I did purposely state 'in North America' as people here have traditionally been literate laggards compared to the public in Europe or Latin America to mention a few places of comparison.
In places like Norway, Great Britain, France and Italy people still read daily newspapers though they increasingly do so on a tablet on the way to work or school and on the way home;
In response to the editor's question, yes I am prepared to pay for online news and in fact already pay for digital access to the Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail and Maclean magazine. My main criteria are whether the reporting is credible - i.e. not Trump style fake news - and whether I find it relevant to where I live and go about my daily life. In that regard the Vancouver Sun currently is skating on thin ice as the last few years have seen the shedding of its best reporters and columnists and more and more advertiser influenced 'reporting'. However I will continue my digital subscription to the Sun mostly because I like to know what is happening in my community around me. The Globe and Mail tells me what is happening in the bigger community of Canada, and Maclean provides in depth reporting and stories I don't want to miss out on.
I am vivid reader of music news ! When I was kid ( preteens even read magazine like this 60s folks till present ) from Billboard ! Crawdaddy! Rolling Stone !( Till it 1980s to commercial! NME! Mojo !Downbeat! I am 67 I only bought last 10 years special issues ! So I was reading articles online ! A lot then I wanted the full article or story ! I found a digital magazine subscription service called Readyl !! ( for 10$ monthly could read 10000 magazine ! My point is I think it depends on Companies to come up decent fair price like that one I found ! Amazon prime members have that always ! We me and my Girlfriend( partner ) use library streaming services ! We do have Hula ! I have Criterion channel ! I am not fan of you tube or streaming music services anymore! Being audiophile ! I think it also depends on how much time people want to invest daily weekly etc online !! At 67 being retired I spend 3 week 1-2 hrs !! I do enjoy your blog and article ( plus your software ! ( which I have purchased many audio ones ) Ok sorry for the lengthy comment !!
The issue I see is more one of a catch 22 scenario. News like any other business relies on money to exist but, because it involves money news is suseptible to corruption because the ultimate goal of any busines is to survive and to survive you must make a profit. This very fact weakens the varacity of an entity, We have been seeing the degradation of every institution that was once held dear because of one reason and one reason only the insasiable greed for money! So for news to be respected it can only be free but being free it will be much harder albeit impossible for it to survive at least in a world where money is the only thing held sacred above ALL else!