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Question of the Day – Online Content
By JLP | February 23, 2009
I read in today’s Wall Street Journal, an editorial about how newpapers should be charging for online content just like they charge for print editions of their papers. The ONLY paper I pay for online content is the Wall Street Journal.
I thought this would make a good question of the day.
Would you pay for an internet newspaper subscription?
Personally, I would not. Why? Because I have found that lots of the articles I read are articles that are shared among many different newspapers either via the Associated Press or due to the fact that one company may own several different newspapers.
Besides, I hate feeling like I’m getting nickeled and dimed to death. I also feel that I’m doing my little part in helping newspapers when I link to their articles. Afterall, I am sending traffic their way.
So, what do you think?
Topics: Question of the Day | 25 Comments »
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:04 am
for the most part i agree with you but I believe I get value out of my ConsumerReports.org subscription … i’ve saved plenty more and I just have to play like $26 a year ..
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 am
Nope. I’m ubercheap and there are tons of places to get news and opinion online for free. I wouldn’t pay for a print subscription for the same reason.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:31 am
We have an online subscription to the WSJ and our local paper. Local paper costs $3.95 per month on line versus $14 for print. Everything else we find for free on the internet.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 am
Not a chance. I’ll pay for books because they offer an in-depth analysis of one topic.
But newspaper articles? They’re all sufficiently similar that paying for one set of them when there is another (larger, just as good) set of them available for free makes no sense to me.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 am
The NY Times tried it for some of their most wanted content and it was an utter failure. If the NY Times can’t make it work, it won’t work. That model isn’t viable..
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:19 am
Pay for my local paper online? Not a chance in hell. Like you said, most of the articles on bigger stories are just AP articles or the like that you can find anywhere, and there isn’t enough original content in our local paper to warrant paying for online access. In fact, I’m letting our daily delivery option lapse next month as well. Even though it’s only 12 bucks a month, I don’t think I get 12 dollars worth of value out of it as it is.
But I do subscribe to the WSJ both online and print. And you know what’s sad, is that actually costs less than our local paper that’s almost worthless. I would consider subscribing to the WSJ online only if there was a significant incentive to do so, but the added cost of a couple dollars to get daily delivery as well is certainly worth it.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:25 am
No, I can’t imagine doing that. I do enjoy the local newspaper online and its community, but wouldn’t pay for it. My husband gets the print edition free at work, so I would read that if the online version came with a fee.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:49 am
I have and will continue to pay for quality subscriptions. The Financial Times and the WSJ are just two of the things, I have paid for in the past.
Consumer Reports easily pays for it $30 yearly subscription.
Valuable information can be worth a lot of money.
February 23rd, 2009 at 11:59 am
If they started charging me to access their content online, then I want a site with no advertisements at all. Newspapers and magazines don’t make any money from subscriptions anyway, it is all advertising revenue. To me, all newspapers and magazines should be free, the more eyeballs looking at their content the more they can charge for advertising. If I am paying I want tons of content and no ads.
February 23rd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I think if you’re making money off the traffic garnered from the info you get from the newspaper articles info, you should be willing to pay a small amount for a news subscription. If it came down paying a small monthly fee, versus losing quality reporting and news and journalists out of jobs, then what’s the big deal to pay?
Print media is still developing a way to port their content digitally, so of course it will take some tweaking to get it to something viable. I’m not surprised with some of the comments above: such a “gimme gimme” mentality when you don’t realize the work that goes into getting that news. Nothing in this world is “free”, and judging by the “I’m too cheap to pay” feedback, I guess no good deed goes unpunished.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:04 pm
Wes,
Please get off your high horse.
We are all aware of how much goes into the making of newspapers. But, I would be willing to bet that advertisers are more concerned with eyeballs. If a newspaper starts charging for content, the eyeballs aren’t gonna be there and therefore the newspaper will not be able to charge as much for advertising.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
I agree that if they charge for content their readership will drop fairly quickly and advertiser’s wont be too happy. I doubt that they could make up the difference. I personally wouldnt pay for online papers.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I pay for an online subscription to one of our local papers, it has enough local content that I can’t get anywhere else that I think it’s worth it. But for national news, I don’t think it is sustainable because national news is such a commodity, a very cheap one at that.
It’s no different from pork bellies or precious metals, when there is a lot available, the price drops. In the case of news, it is so abundant that the price has dropped to $0.
In a way it is like water, necessary and totally free. Yet Coca Cola and PepsiCo have managed to make a whole lot of money by the marketing and packaging of this free resource. The WSJ editor should take a clue from that.
February 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Not me. There’s free stuff just as good (or even better) than almost any paid subscription.
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I seriously doubt that I would pay for a subscription to an online newspapers, even though I have given donations to bloggers on occasion.
I stopped reading newspapers, not mainly because of the cost, but because of the poor quality of the reporting. I have had dealings with reporters in the past at work, and most of the time they are unable to get it right even when you write it down for them. And I’m not talking about differences of opinion or political positions (That’s a subject for another day), just the basic facts and figures. Given that experience, I have little faith in the content of most newspapers, and so see little reason to pay for their products.
February 23rd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
A lot of papers do this, or offer some free articles and most paid. Even ESPN does this. If it is a source you read often and respect, I would pay for it within reason.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm
I’d be willing to pay under two conditions:
1. Unique news (either different than or faster than other sites) AND
2. No ads.
February 23rd, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I agree that there has to be some benefit in paying for the online content. Perhaps this could mean it is free of ads, but I still don’t think that would be worth it for me. There are just too many other sources out there for news that if one started charging, the majority of us would go elsewhere. Now if everyone started charging at the same time, that might be a different story.
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I would not pay for on-line as there are lots of ways to get info for free (and I don’t consistently have the time to read the (hardcopy) Chicago Trib to which I do subscribe.) However, as you know, JLP, I would never drop that subscription b/c of the coupons that save me big bucks throughout the year!
February 23rd, 2009 at 6:04 pm
In a world where SO MUCH information is available, either everyone has to charge, or no one can. The exceptions to this would be, for example, WSJ & Consumer Reports, whose product is unique from all the other reporting on the internet. They are not the same thing as a “local” paper – more like a Reader’s Digest or People magazine.
I would not pay for information that I can get somewhere else for free. If it was not possible to get it for free, and I was going to have to pay, I would buy it from the most-trusted source, not just the most “local” one, so the local paper STILL wouldn’t be getting my money. I don’t think that’s a plan that will ever work. The internet age of information has changed all of that.
February 23rd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
There will always be “free” news. You can’t stop the sharing of information so why even try. Monetize through ads and generate profits through quality writing and loyal readers.
There is nothing worse than getting a magazine that is 60% ads, 20% fluff, 15% picture page articles, and 5% quality articles. That model will not last online as it will push readers away.
February 24th, 2009 at 12:41 am
There’s no way I’d pay for a newspaper any more.
Chances are I can find it for free online, and even if I couldn’t, I don’t think a newspaper article would be worth the money I’d spend on a subscription.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Nope. Call me the “new generation” but such basic information isn’t worth paying for. If it truly is newsworthy it will be plastered on the internet. If it isn’t plastered, Googlebot will crawl it in a day or two. If it isn’t on Googlebot*(or similar) then it probably isn’t worth reading.
*Disclaimer: Use multiple sources, especially those with international ties. Many search results are often filtered or biased, heavily.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:45 am
Let me say this in followup, too. Information exists to be free. For-profit media goes against the ideals of a unbiased free press, because the information immediately has a bias, for profit.
Fees and subscriptions can exist in print media to pay for the cost of productions, and historically, many media organizations took a loss on, say, the paper, recognizing its value in getting information out to people. That said, in an environment where the cost is nearly nothing to reproduce (once the article is written, you can deliver the same article billions of times with nearly no cost to you, save for your hardware fees and internet maintenance).
It certainly isnt the $100,000+ per day cost of running newsprint.
February 24th, 2009 at 7:39 am
My hometown newspaper is slimming down and I get to pay more for less. One of local talk radio hosts, who is critical of the paper’s liberal bias, noted that regardless how he feels, we need to pay for the news because someone has to pay for the reporters and their expenses for gathering this information. And if we leave to the various news bureaus like UPI, AP, Reuters, etc, we get less choices and less originality.
As I read the comments talking about free information and free press, I get scared because these people don’t realize what it costs to produce news. It’s all well and good to say that news will make it to the ‘net but is it accurate? Is it researched? Who is posting it? Who is going to pay someone to spend all their time doing investigative reporting? Who is going to pay to send reporters half-way around the world and stay in dangerous areas? Who is going to believe native bloggers with cultural and religious restrictions?