News is almost a commodity – but the trick is to work out what you've got that will make people want to pay
Begin talking about putting paywalls around online news content and all sorts of things happen. In my case, you get accused of being a "soft leak" for forthcoming Guardian plans (I'm not: I have no idea whether Guardian News & Media has any such plans), along with a parade of the polarised arguments.
The news that the Sun will introduce some form of charging (probably a fence around Premier League video clips), and the Telegraph will erect a so-called "porous paywall" offering a certain number of articles per month free before you start paying, certainly has people thinking. By the end of this year, we'll have gone from a position where at the start of 2010 only the FT and Wall Street Journal Europe had paywalls, to one where only the Guardian, Mail Online and the Mirror and Express titles won't have some form of it as things stand. the Independent , (The Independent, which has had an on-again, off-again relationship with paywalls, has put one up for non-UK readers).
Much the same is happening in the US, from the New York Times onwards. But to hear some of the wailing and gnashing, you'd think no site had ever charged for anything. At a time when music services like Spotify, Pandora (in the US), last.fm, Deezer and many others offer paid-for access to streamed music, people seem to be getting used to paying for immaterial stuff online.
Even so, when I mused on this on Twitter the other day, I got the standard responses. First: "You can't charge for news – it's a commodity." But as commodities go, news isn't that fungible – replaceable in equal parts. The Daily Telegraph's reports on the bedroom tax differ substantially from the Guardian's. Those differ from the BBC's. That's to be expected, but it means you're unlikely to ignore the paywall on one unless you're after the truly fungible news, such as the weather forecast.
The other classic response is "you've never charged before, and the internet likes free stuff". Fabulous canard. News websites didn't charge at launch because there wasn't the scale – few people were on the internet, and working payment systems were rare. They also wanted to see if internet advertising would wash the websites' faces. Turns out it doesn't, unless you're colossally big – Mail Online big. Hence paywall. It's a matter of commercial survival. Also – companies can, and do, start charging for stuff any time.
The response is "then everyone will go elsewhere". Well, I'm certainly not saying newspapers (online) have some divine right to exist; only that they're good at working out what their audience likes to read, or, increasingly, listen to and watch. (The Sun and the Premier League being a classic example.) Tempting people to jump over the payment wall is what newspapers (print) have been doing for years: look at any front page.
I asked Paul Carr, a former MediaGuardian writer (and, disclosure, friend) whose paywalled Las Vegas-based NSFW publishing company is now moving into print, for his view. He thinks porous paywalls are stupid: they "reward casual readers and punish enthusiastic ones, which is the precise opposite of logical". (I have to say I agree with him there.) "And so the walls will get higher and higher until they're fully paid, like print used to be." His parting shot? "The Guardian will absolutely go paywall".)
Though arguably, that's the wrong way to do it. Carr also points out (as did tweeters) that "freemium" services like Spotify keep the core product paid-for, while offering a free version with fewer features. The core product at Spotify isn't the music; that's the commodity. It's high audio quality, choice and lack of interruption. The free version is lower-quality, limited and ad-interrupted. Keep people tuned in, and they'll convert.
So news organisations need to work out what their core product is, and how to make it so attractive that people want to pay. News isn't entirely a commodity, but it almost is. What's the core, though? The point of view? Presentation? The analysis and discussion (including comments) around articles? You can argue for each. What's the Spotify for news? If you know, do share. Knowing this is worth a lot of money to some people. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.
Begin talking about putting paywalls around online news content and all sorts of things happen. In my case, you get accused of being a "soft leak" for forthcoming Guardian plans (I'm not: I have no idea whether Guardian News & Media has any such plans), along with a parade of the polarised arguments.
The news that the Sun will introduce some form of charging (probably a fence around Premier League video clips), and the Telegraph will erect a so-called "porous paywall" offering a certain number of articles per month free before you start paying, certainly has people thinking. By the end of this year, we'll have gone from a position where at the start of 2010 only the FT and Wall Street Journal Europe had paywalls, to one where only the Guardian, Mail Online and the Mirror and Express titles won't have some form of it as things stand. the Independent , (The Independent, which has had an on-again, off-again relationship with paywalls, has put one up for non-UK readers).
Much the same is happening in the US, from the New York Times onwards. But to hear some of the wailing and gnashing, you'd think no site had ever charged for anything. At a time when music services like Spotify, Pandora (in the US), last.fm, Deezer and many others offer paid-for access to streamed music, people seem to be getting used to paying for immaterial stuff online.
Even so, when I mused on this on Twitter the other day, I got the standard responses. First: "You can't charge for news – it's a commodity." But as commodities go, news isn't that fungible – replaceable in equal parts. The Daily Telegraph's reports on the bedroom tax differ substantially from the Guardian's. Those differ from the BBC's. That's to be expected, but it means you're unlikely to ignore the paywall on one unless you're after the truly fungible news, such as the weather forecast.
The other classic response is "you've never charged before, and the internet likes free stuff". Fabulous canard. News websites didn't charge at launch because there wasn't the scale – few people were on the internet, and working payment systems were rare. They also wanted to see if internet advertising would wash the websites' faces. Turns out it doesn't, unless you're colossally big – Mail Online big. Hence paywall. It's a matter of commercial survival. Also – companies can, and do, start charging for stuff any time.
The response is "then everyone will go elsewhere". Well, I'm certainly not saying newspapers (online) have some divine right to exist; only that they're good at working out what their audience likes to read, or, increasingly, listen to and watch. (The Sun and the Premier League being a classic example.) Tempting people to jump over the payment wall is what newspapers (print) have been doing for years: look at any front page.
I asked Paul Carr, a former MediaGuardian writer (and, disclosure, friend) whose paywalled Las Vegas-based NSFW publishing company is now moving into print, for his view. He thinks porous paywalls are stupid: they "reward casual readers and punish enthusiastic ones, which is the precise opposite of logical". (I have to say I agree with him there.) "And so the walls will get higher and higher until they're fully paid, like print used to be." His parting shot? "The Guardian will absolutely go paywall".)
Though arguably, that's the wrong way to do it. Carr also points out (as did tweeters) that "freemium" services like Spotify keep the core product paid-for, while offering a free version with fewer features. The core product at Spotify isn't the music; that's the commodity. It's high audio quality, choice and lack of interruption. The free version is lower-quality, limited and ad-interrupted. Keep people tuned in, and they'll convert.
So news organisations need to work out what their core product is, and how to make it so attractive that people want to pay. News isn't entirely a commodity, but it almost is. What's the core, though? The point of view? Presentation? The analysis and discussion (including comments) around articles? You can argue for each. What's the Spotify for news? If you know, do share. Knowing this is worth a lot of money to some people. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.