What online media is worth the payment?
Posted on Mon, Feb 22, 2010
By Ben
In rolling out its 2011 plan to begin charging online users, The New York Times makes a grand call-to-action to other industry leaders. While the need for increased revenue is clear, the success of this plan requires a major undertaking: shifting the way readers view media content. This is not an easy paradigm to break. Readers want their Web-based news to be high-caliber, bountiful and, above all, free. Until this point, they’ve gotten it. The Web is synonymous with free content. If you charge, they will go somewhere else. The New York Times can’t go this one alone. They need buy-in from other major newspapers. Even if The Times rallies wide support for its new pay-per-play model, is it enough to shift consumer mindset?
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of the New York Times, frames this intent perfectly: “This is more about where we think the Web is going.” In his predictive statement, Sulzberger lays out the future of Web-based content. In its position of power, it is perhaps The Times that can make this prediction a reality. Yet, the paper is working against a stubborn readership base steeped in a Web culture of “free and now.” A 2009 Forrester study states 80 percent of Americans would go somewhere else if charged for content. Furthermore, a recent Nielsen survey of individuals in 52 countries finds nearly eight out of 10 would no longer use a Web site which charges for content. The aggregates’ unwillingness to pay for content – in the context of a blogosphere brimming with rich, nuanced information -- raises the question: is this just an outmoded model?
On one level, we can’t continue to expect and demand high-quality content at no cost. It’s just not sustainable. Over the past year, the Times alone has been forced to take out a $250 million private loan, sell off major real estate assets and cut numerous jobs. Also, let’s not overlook the countless reporters who, in many cases, risk their lives in remote areas of the world to bring us coverage. While these financial realities and personal risks by reporters should compel individual readers to pick up the tab, it’s evident that the majority will not. Even if major publications unite in a joint plan to charge for content, will this be enough to shift the power of the blogosphere?
Blogs are able to offer extraordinary content on limited budgets, oftentimes pulling information directly from citizen journalists living the story in real time before hitting major outlets, all at no cost to the reader. The increasing validity of such non-traditional forms of news delivery was highlighted last week when a prestigious Polk Award in Journalism was bestowed upon the “anonymous individuals responsible for recording the shooting death of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan at a June protest in Tehran, Iran.” The video, widely distributed via Twitter, YouTube and other internet sources, was later covered by established news outlets. The recognition of these unknown videographers as award-winning citizen journalists raises plenty of thorny questions about the future of the media beyond the pay-per-view model proposed by The New York Times.
And the reality remains; there are operating models to which readers are responding. Regardless of the success or failure of The Times’ content-charging plan, such an announcement is sure to stir up discussion on how to further create quality-content on a shoestring.