Newspapers Online: Why Information Will No Longer Be Free

The Columbia Journalism Review ^ | January/February 2003 | Michael Scherer

[quidnunc]

Posted in its entirety.

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[prairiebreeze]

But if many people could redo history they would prefer that the everything-is-free Internet model had never gained ascendancy."

Liberals most certainly would prefer to keep tight control on what the public knows. Memogate, case in point.

Prairie

[GeronL]

haha

I always knew the liberal newspaper guys would catch on sooner or later. Boy, its taking forever though. Someday they will report, not just a university department, that giving things away does not make a profit.

It will be an epiphany for many of them.

[prov1813man]

That leaves executives with the unenviable task of putting the free-news genie back in the bottle. "It's hard to second-guess history," says Tribune's Hiller. "But if many people could redo history they would prefer that the everything-is-free Internet model had never gained ascendancy."

What these guys don't get is that it's not up to them. They no longer control the news flow. The only result they will find in charging for their "news" is that no one will buy it. The internet breaks the hierarchical model. Consumers and producers no longer need the middle man. The more those who are losing control try to regain it, the more they will lose.

[ex-Texan]

The genie cannot be put back into the bottle IMPO. Too late. I refuse to give a newspaper any personal info about me when I log onto a site. I find the pop up ads offensive, especially the really crappy ads that Drudge runs on his site. The NYT, LAT and others are just going to have to live with the Internet.

[GatekeeperBookman]

Almost no one who can read still buys a paper-they are vacuous & they smell bad. Raedin gmost of them kills brain cells-it's over for the liberal rags. None of their best customers can read-they only think they read.

[gcruse]

. The only result they will find in charging for their "news" is that no one will buy it.

Then they will stop promulgating it and we
will go back to...what?  There is no right
to free news.

[Cicero]

Aggressive ads won't do them any good. I use Ad Muncher, which I warmly recommend. It's well worth the small shareware fee. It blocks popups, popunders, and almost all banner ads as well. As a result I save a ton of time loading pages with ads on them.

A few newspapers like the Wall Street Journal can successfully sell web subscriptions. The rest of them are going to continue fading away whether or not they continue to offer free web access.

The Columbia Journalism School is world headquarters for liberal journalists. They have a vested interest in CONTROLLING the news and protecting their cozy little franchise. Sorry, guys, the news is about to slip out of your control.

[Incorrigible]

Bump

[quidnunc]

It's not the AP-wire news that will be lost, it is the op/eds and think-tank analysis pieces that put the raw news into perspective which will be sorely missed.

[ex-Texan]

And another thing. Major newspapers and network media do not report what is really going on in the world. New York City raised its terror warnings today, and there was not one word reported by ABC, CBS, NBC or the New York Slimes.

You have to surf the web to find out WHAT is happening. Why is that ????

[okie01]

"Then they will stop promulgating it and we will go back to...what? There is no right to free news."

The free market will insure that some news sites remain free. Somebody will always be willing to sponsor a high-traffic site. And, if everybody else is selling subscriptions, the free site will get the traffic.

That's assuming the Democrats never get control of the web, of course. In which case, there would be no news -- only propaganda. And you'd have to pay for it...

[Billthedrill]

We've actually been here before. When broadcast news came along the print media were aghast - how could advertising possibly afford the broadcasters funds sufficient to gather, digest, and present the news? And if it did, how could newspapers possibly compete?

Well, of course, they did. And the actual marketing model has not changed, nor is it likely that a subscription newspaper, even if presented over a digital medium, will compete successfully with a "free" one - the only difference will be the methods of presenting the advertisement and collecting the cash. It is, and always has been, quite feasible for a newspaper to depend entirely on advertising income - the "free" weeklies are proof of this - just as their broadcasting counterparts do. In short, nothing has really changed all that much, and those newspapers who are careful enough not to price themselves off the market will do just fine. Those who insist on forcing a change in marketing just because the medium has changed, in the hopes that the world will change in their favor, will go broke.

[upchuck]

Posted in its entirety.

THANK YOU!!!

BUMP!

[Knitebane]

Then they will stop promulgating it and we will go back to...what? There is no right to free news.

And no right to make money off of news either. There is only the right to try.

What will it go back to? Well, it could go back to people publishing news and disseminating it for free. You know, the way that most news was disseminated for the first 100 years or so that our country existed?

Or perhaps one of the newer business models, such as advertising supported, or donation supported. FR seems to do just fine on that model.

And another idea is to go the way that Slashdot.org has gone: Subscribers get to see stories first, and non-subscribers can see them later for free.

The general whine from a lot of industries impacted by the Internet seems to be, "But we can't make money like we always have!!! Somebody do something!! Pass a law or something!"

Well, too bad. There aren't a lot of professional candle makers, or whale oil sellers or buggy whip manufacturers anymore, but that's just the way it goes. Adapt, find a new revenue model, or go under.

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upchuck wrote: (Posted in its entirety.) THANK YOU!!! BUMP!

But don't expect this very often.

[Dave W]

Well, USA Today sells over 2.6 million on Fridays and 2.2 million on the other days. WSJ has close to 2 million copies a day.....I could go on but you get the point.

The papers continue to sell.

[x]

It's a race or a fight now between webloggers who put their stuff out for free, papers that will try to get their money back by advertising or registration, and sources that want money up front.

Bloggers can cite and paraphrase and discuss articles in proprietory pay sites to the point where the public basically knows what those articles say. They can push the discussion forward beyond what the proprietory sites publish. If you want the cold, hard details, you'll have to pay for them, or at least go to a library. Otherwise you may not miss much.

There is a downside to the pay strategies. Proprietory materials don't get as much visibility or discussion, so magazines and newspapers can charge their way out of public debates. I'd imagine that when the New Republic put most of their articles on a pay subscription basis, a lot of people stopped bothering with them.

[A Citizen Reporter]

"Several recent studies suggest that print readers are turning to the Web for news."

You don't say? And from the Columbia Journalism school. How thoroughly up-to-date! As a "print reader" who discovered the internet, oh about the time of the OJ trial, I've been on the net for about 10 years. Print journalism will not be able to re-capture its audience, until it revises its content.