Would you pay for news online?
Posted by Mediascaper on January 12, 2009
In the Jan. 11 New York Times article “Let’s Invent an iTunes for news,” David Carr argues for a business model that will convince readers to pay for some of their online news.
Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine proceeded to take Carr to task in “Penny for his thoughts.” He writes:
Carr’s delusion is that a news story or an opinion, like a song, is unique — that you can’t get it somewhere else and so you have to buy the original. … But if I can’t get Carr’s column about wishing for micropayments, believe me, I can go elsewhere and find plenty more columns and blog posts just like it.
True, you could find other articles with a similar point of view. But they wouldn’t have Carr’s particular point of view, or his unique set of supports for his argument, or his writing style. It also presumes one would know to look for them. I found Carr’s article through Buzzmachine and Romenekso, which (along with the Times) are in my bookmarks. It wasn’t because I started trolling the Internet for information about online pay models.
Time is also a major issue. How many people working 10- to 12-hours-a-day jobs would have the time, patience or energy to spend searching Google to find free content on every particular piece of news that interests them if it might already be available to them for a small fee from a known, reputable source? If I pay for Consumer Reports online, I’m not just buying its information. I’m paying for the convenience of being able to quickly access valuable content from a centralized location and a source I trust.
Even assuming that I know the subject of Carr’s article without reading it, I would rather pay for his column (if the topic really interests me) than go searching the Web for free, related content. That’s because I associate a high standard of journalism with the New York Times, and because I trust that Carr, who is paid for his work, would have synthesized the information that might be gleaned from dozens of other blog posts and sources.
Which leads me to Zac’s comment that a text message about a fire is just as good as the 600-word article in the local paper. Maybe that’s true for Zac, but I would guess it’s not true for a lot of other people, myself included. (Never mind that it does nothing to counter the argument that it’s not an apocalyptic business idea to charge for some news.) His friend’s text message (or subsequent texts) isn’t going to include interviews with eyewitnesses or the owners of the building or the firemen who fought the blaze. Let’s assume Zac doesn’t care about all that; just knowing that a building burned is enough. Well, is that going to hold true for issues of increasing importance? Will a text message also suffice for stories about cuts to local school budgets or zoning decisions that impact people’s lives? And no, I’m not arguing that only paid journalists working for news corporations can do this kind of work. Dedicated bloggers can as well. And if they provide a high level of quality reporting for free, you can be sure I’ll choose them before I choose a pay site.
I also have to echo Ian’s groan about Zac’s comment that he doesn’t need to read Carr’s article because Jarvis already addressed it. It was precisely because of Jarvis’s criticism that I wanted to hear Carr speak for himself. Glad I did, because his piece was both well-written and thought-provoking.
Finally, Jarvis writes that “information isn’t art” – but why should that be the criteria for determining what has value in the marketplace? Borders and Barnes & Noble are filled with books and journals that are artless compendiums of knowledge. And people pay for them. If I had to pay a yearly subscription to Slate.com or start a debit account that decreased with each article I read, I would.
