News is free: who will pay for quality journalism?

Subash Gobine

ICT usage• International Telecommunications Union

(ITU) revealed, in 2009, that:• 27% of the world population has access to a

computer at home (1.9 billion)• 65.7% were subscribed to mobile

technologies (4.6 billion)• 17.8% had access to a fixed telephone line,

and• 9.5% users were connected to mobile

broadband

What does this mean?1. The barriers of entry have been

lowered and information is no longer scarce

• “ICT tools provide new and limitless platforms for the creation and dissemination of news.”

What does this mean?2. Geographic boundaries no longer

matter“ICTs allow for instantaneous global

consumption of news from different parts of the globe.”

What does this mean?3. Instantaneous news• “The new tools are also offering

opportunities on a global scale for instant response to news.”

What does this mean?4. News is a bonus• “In the new environment, consumers

have only to pay for the access to telecommunications tools which, anyway, are being used for a variety of purposes, not just for connecting to the web. Access to news comes as a bonus.”

What does this mean?5. News for free from amateurs• ‘Participatory’ or street journalism• Citizen journalism• Blogosphere• Democracy• Plurality• Eg: Questioning of the ‘fairytale’ wedding

of Pres. Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni

Credibility• “However the big question remains:

how reliable were the blogs in exposing the supposed indiscretions of Sarkozy and his wife?”

• Objectivity• Balance • Accuracy

Credibility• Are people willing to pay for credible

news though?• “Now that more and more people around

the world are exposed to free news, are they willing to pay for reports and articles available on the conventional media? New media users who have been exposed to the conventional media are better qualified to judge the credibility of different news sources.”

Free news?• Newspapers are losing audiences

due to:• Decline in advertising revenue• Disinterest of potential young

readers• “In offering free access to news,

traditional media are aiming at keeping their audience share and even expanding on it.”

• Tipping point Critical mass that is willing to pay (eg. Social networking sites and NYT)

Free news?• “Offering free access is not meant

only to increase the audience and advertising base. The professional media are building customer loyalty at the same time. Through this calibration act, media expect to reach a point where enough traffic has been built up to introduce a dose of paid access.

Philip Meyer’s Influence model

How to make users pay for access

http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/12/how-the-nyt-paywall-is-working/?dlvrit=60132

How to make users pay for access

• The most common formula takes the form of two-tiered access: some content is free, some is paid for

• The New York Times: allows free access to a certain amount of articles, then a flat fee will be charged for unlimited access, after that quota has been reached

How to make users pay for access

• The Wall Street Journal offers highlights for free but the in-depth story can only be accessed against payment.

How to make users pay for access

• The London-based Financial Times introduced a metered use payment system: a number of articles are free, then the reader is charged as per the number of stories accessed.

Please keep off the grass• The NYT paywall is so porous that it can be considered to be a

genuinely freemium model. If you follow a link to the NYT site, you will never run into the paywall—no matter how many times you do so or how many NYT articles you’ve read that month. If you then want to stay on the NYT site and read other stories there, it’s very easy to do that too: the paywall might appear, but it’s easy to circumvent. (One popular way of doing this: just strip off the extra garbage in the URL which summons the paywall.) That’s why I likened the NYT paywall to a polite “please keep off the grass” sign, with symbolic low green hoops separating would-be readers from their desired content. If they want to get there, it’s easy to do so; the NYT is just making it clear to them that it would like them to pay for a subscription first. Being both polite and reasonably wealthy, it turns out that hundreds of thousands of nytimes.com readers have done just that. – Felix Salmon from Columbia Journalism Review

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/why_the_nyt_paywall_isnt_like.php

Please keep off the grass• NYT paywall is working because the paper

has been able to attract about 400,000 paying users

•  The media business has never been about denying access to people who want to read your publication, but the paywalls at News Corp, as well as the one at the FT, are based around that model. The NYT, by contrast, has proven that people will pay even if the paywall is extremely porous.

The bad news for small media

• “The bad news is that only big players enjoying a user critical mass and media synergies… stand to gain from paid access. Small players stand at risk of being squeezed out of the market both by Murdochracy and the free new media”.

The end.