The Fate of The Free Newspaper 459
jm92956n writes "We've all become accustomed to the wide availability of newspapers and other media online, almost all of which is available for free. Today, however, The New York Times (free registration required; how ironic!) is running an article that questions the long term viability of that business model. Interestingly, the Times now has more online readers than print readers. Is the era of free news content about to end?"
Payment is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
1). We're already used to it being free
2.) The payment barrier still sucks, i.e.: No valid micropayment system exists (STILL) and people who read their news ont he web generally don't want a subscription to every resource they use. If there were a reasonable micropayment system in place, where content poroviders could charge you a few cents to read an article or access certian content, without hassle to the end-user, this type of thing could work.
How do you get a critical mass using a micropayment system? I'm not touching that one. If I had an answer, I'd already be at 5.) Profit!
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:2)
You know what worries me? The answer to micropayments will be PayPal. That's scary. But probably what will happen. We're certainly there for mini-payments right now ($2-$5 stuff).
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we need some kind of micropayment standard, where people could pay a small amount if they only want to read a single article on a subscrption only website, and then the payment comes with your ISP fees and the ISP pays whoever you're paying to.
There would need to be some huge protections around this, though... so it's not abused by shady "click OK if you want to pay us 10,000 dollars" kind of websites.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:2)
Google could solve this with a snap of its fingers. They're already searching online papers, they just need to devise a way to bill people for reading paid content and distribute payments to the papers. Subscription or pay-as-you-go online credits might work.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Pay-per-view results from Google already happen (Score:3, Interesting)
And the day Google starts routing me to pay-per-view pages without clearly notifying me in advance is the day I find another search engine.
This already happens when you type a linguistic term into Google. You will typically get a lot of results from journal articles in PubMed, where abstracts are free but most full text costs at least 20 USD. You can identify these pay-per-view articles by looking for evidence of NOCACHE instructions, namely the absence of a "Cached" link (for HTML) or the absence of a
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think people like micropayments. Flat rate for a lot of stuff would appeal to a lot of people a whole lot more.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's something I use regularly, I'd rather pay a subscription. If it's something I just browse now and then, a micropayment model would be fine.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:3, Funny)
It has been many years since any newspapers were made from "trees". It costs way to much to much produce.
Newspapers of today are made from herbaceous plants.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:4, Informative)
But they don't collect from forrests, but from plantations. In a plantation it comes in huge lumps carefully arranged in neat lines for easy collection. No picking up small amounts from each of a million suppliers.
Most paper is bleached whatever the source.
But trees aren't treated with dyes specially designed to be hard to remove. It's much easier to get rid of a slight yellowish tinge in fresh wood pulp than to get rid of colour-fast inks.
I believe the biggest problem is that once you've used the stuff once, the fibers are mashed and broken, so turning it back into pulp, giving it a heavy chemical treatment and then into paper results in poor quality paper. The best use, other than bog-roll, is to mix it with new wood pulp to make it go further.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Quite common for magazines. I think most newspapers don't assume their content has enough medium-term value to make the free online access a significant draw, so it's not worth using access to it to try and increase paper circulation, rather they use the online presence as advertising.
One interesting case is the BBC [bbc.co.uk] funded by UK TV licence payers. They have no real mot
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Funny)
This would be possible if only one or two media companies owned everything. Too bad things aren't going that direction...
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:3)
I'd wager than the subscription revenue would far outstrip the pay-per-song side.
Improving their revenue is not exactly what I hope for when choosing a payment model.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
They make money from the ads inside and they charge more for adds by the amount of reader they have.
Same thing for magazine, 3/4 of a magazione are advertisement and they still charge you for it.
It's people's mentality to beleive that a newspaper that is free is not good and can't have good article, they rather read a newpaper that you pay for.
Free News (Score:4, Interesting)
The Economist (Score:4, Informative)
No, most material there is not free. Perhaps the front page looks that way, but try clicking on "current issue".
But you're right, they have a terrific business model. They got me hooked with the free stuff and eventually I got tired of not being able to read the rest and subscribed. And I'm not alone: they recently hit the million subscriber mark.
I certainly wouldn't subscribe to the NYT if it tried that stunt, but I'm sure there are people who would. In fact, there may be people who already do, to read the archives.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Easy, if you're Microsoft.
1) Release $5 or $10 worth of bundled micropayments with Longhorn.
2) Siphon a percentage of the transactions.
3) People see value in micropayment driven content and find themselves renewing with their own dime.
4) Profit!
Unfortunately, Microsoft is playing the role of the evil monopoly that can do nothing right. So we'll have to wait until some bright spark does it first and then gets aquired by Microsoft.
You'd think that, with an R&D budget in the billions, we'd have this from Microsoft by now. Is there some sort of rule that prevents large companies from coming up with something innovative on their own?
Social link propagation is also a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
A subscription-only site has less value to me since I can't spread the news around. Even if I subscribe to a micropayments scheme, my friends probably don't.
If you close content off from the public, you reduce the value of that content. A subscription site might have great content, but most people will never know about it because no-one else is linking too it.
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition: Maybe I, as a taxpayer, don't want my nickel going to the liberal/conservative/communist/libertarian rag on the corner, and I only want to financially support the local whack-job-environmentalist newsletter. Why should I be forced to subsidize the others?
Re:Payment is the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people, after paying that amount of money, probably feel entitled to have a certain level of access to information. When you pay for a cable subscription, you get a bunch of channels as part of the deal. You then pay more for premium content without the ads. That seems to be the business model right
free news content (Score:5, Funny)
Paypal me $1 for the answer.
On the move (Score:5, Interesting)
Tradeoff? (Score:2)
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:3, Interesting)
From Buffy: (Well, Giles actually) (Score:4, Insightful)
Giles: The smell.
Ms Calendar: Computers don't smell, Rupert.
Giles: I know. Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell. Musty and, and, and, and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer, is, it
Ms Calendar: Well! You really are an old-fashioned boy, aren't you?
This explain anything? That said, there really is something about having an acutal piece of paper in your hands. Maybe if electronic paper [parc.com] ever gets developed enought that might help.
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:3, Insightful)
If giving away words printed on paper is a viable business model, there's no way you can argue that giving away words on a computer screen isn't. Walking through Union Station in the morning, I see no fewer than three different free daily newspapers. Obviously someone is making money doing this, otherwise they wouldn't keep doing it.
Waste of a tree? I think not... (Score:4, Funny)
Tip: For added camouflage, poke little 'eye' holes through one side and be rendered practically invisible!
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:5, Insightful)
The weight. The portability. The convenience. Yeah, I can pop open my laptop in bed, or at the kitchen table, but the physical paper is much easier to carry around from bed to kitchen. When on the subway, it's impossible to pop open a laptop to read the news. On the commuter train, you can use a laptop, but with the crowded seats the paper is still more convenient. During lunch if it's nice out I'll head to the park, maybe bring the paper with me. The actual paper is so much easier to carry around and to read than a full sized laptop. No, PDAs just don't work for reading news.
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:5, Funny)
Exactly. Not to mention the other uses.
Have you ever used a laptop to line a bird cage? The keys get sticky.
Or house train a dog? You can really injure a puppy if you discipline it using the online version of NYT on your full-tower box.
Although some laptops seem to run hot enough to start fires, using a "paper" newspaper is a much better idea for a fireplace.
Paper gives you much better blanket coverage when sleeping on the subway. Chances are that if a bum has a laptop, he won't be needing to sleep on the subway anyway. It's also much harder to discreetly spy/follow somebody on the street if you're trying to walk around holding a laptop in front of your face.
Paper newspapers will never go away.
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd love if all journals/newspapers also did a complete "digitization" of their materials and released a yearly compendium on CD/DVD (just for quick searches), but nothing still quite beats the actual FEEL of reading a good paper-based product.
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:2)
It may be read while visiting the restroom.
This was the argument of a couple of consumers in favour of a printed TV-programme magazine when I conducted a couple of in-depth interviews.
The foldable foil-display gadget will take care of he issue once it is there.
CC.
Resolution and breakfast (Score:2)
Another answer I haven't seen mentioned in the other responses is resolution. A laptop screen runs at maybe 70 DPI; perhaps anti-aliasing runs that up to an equivalent of 90. A paper is printed at something more equivalent to 300 DPI, which makes the text a whole lot easier on the eyes.
I see this all the time in offices; people will take PDFs and prin
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Tradeoff? (Score:2)
So wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, where were you in 2000... (Score:2, Funny)
Can't beat the Beeb. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can't beat the Beeb. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Can't beat the Beeb. (Score:2)
Re:Can't beat the Beeb. (Score:2)
I like the BBC, but they don't cover local US politics. They cover lots of important stuff, but I also think it's important to have someone putting my mayor on the spot occasionally....
--Bruce Fields
Slight elaboration on corporate ties (Score:2)
Re:Can't beat the Beeb. (Score:2)
Not for long. The BBC's charter is under review again and the calls for privatisation that come at such times are just as loud. But the Hutton inquiry did real damage this time, and some politicians smell blood.
This Sunday Times article [timesonline.co.uk] is a representative overview in the online media about the likelihood of a sale, but a swift Google reveals that some of these arguments have been going on for years.
Frankly, all public broadcasting and their associated websites are seen as unfair competition by the cor
Re:BBC is not unbiased (Score:2)
Uhuh. So what country are you from? I'm sure that your country has/is making mistakes. At least we have learnt that you can't go looting a country, and not accept the consequences afterwards.
Re:Can't beat the Beeb. (Score:2)
Except that the BBC is not funded by the government, but by viewers. It is funded by a compulsory levy on TV owners, true, but that money is not a "tax" in the sense that it is not paid to the government - it's paid to the BBC.
Which by the above logi makes the BBC a tool of the people, not the government or the corporations. And yes, that is better.
Re:Not biased? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not sure that "unbiased" in a possibility. Any reporting always puts a slant on things.
>Most news in the U.S. skews to the left.
I am not sure that "most" is that meaningful, but it depends on where you compare to. My experience on US news is that it is fairly right wing. But this, in turn, is just reflective of US society, which is to the right on my own country (the UK). However, most of the national media outlets are on the coasts, which tend to be the most left wing parts of the US. So compared to the US population as a whole, it probably is slightly left slanted.
Incidentally, the Marxist assumption would not be that "owned by someone means conservative". It would be that because a news source is owned by someone, it will generally operate to the benefit of the owner, rather than society at large, whether that is conservative or otherwise. This is, I think, probably fair. The BBC has it's bias as well, but at least this is different from the prevailing news media, which is no bad thing.
Phil
Doesn't look that way to this DC resident (Score:5, Interesting)
They both seem to have viable business models and in fact the Express has already decimated small group of targetted suburban papers that had cost $.35 which have now either gone out print, or or free depending on the suburban county each served. And the Post is finding that its free paper is doing better than it is [dcist.com]. Though I think that growth will slow because of the Examiner which seems closer to a real newspaers (if one only on par to the NY Post or NY News) than the Express which consists entirely of heavily cropped wire stories. The Examiner at least has unique features and few of its own writers - plus it runs in depth wire stories, especially in SPORTS - which with the launch of the Washington Nationals [mlb.com] should 'sell' a lot of free papers.
Re:Doesn't look that way to this DC resident (Score:2)
It doesn't hurt that the guys handing them out at the Metro stations shove them in your face even when you say "no thanks."
Free news? Sure,..now more than ever (Score:4, Interesting)
No, here in Washington DC in the last year we have seen the launch of 2 free newspapers, dailies in fact. The Post's Express and the Examiner. Add that to the Citypaper and we have three.
We are quite saturated with free news.
Re:Free news? Sure,..now more than ever (Score:2)
Reg free link (Score:3, Informative)
No it's not about to end (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the same story. Nothing to see here, move along!
Re:No it's not about to end (Score:2)
I think we are reaching that era now (at least for information business).
It was never free in the first place... (Score:2, Insightful)
We're also in the era... (Score:4, Insightful)
Print papers are actually free, comparitavely.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Web distribution is negligible on daily per-person basis.
The problem here is the failure of online advertising. Somehow during the dotcom boom "per click" payment became the obsession. It seems on the web "branding" or "product awareness" is no longer valuable. There's no perfectly quantifiable way to tell if these sort of ads work in newspapers or television, but if they're not getting the clicks they want, the advertisers say "web advertising doesn't work!!"
I think the obvious answer to this is local data, such as google local. Using your ip address to find your locality and serving up neighborhood ads is the only way for this business model to work-- not just advertising pizza hut, but putting pizza hut's local numbers in the ads you see will help.
But you guys can't have it both ways-- if you block the ads through your browser or your host list, you can't expect free content forever. That's why i don't use anything (other than a popup blocker, of course) to prohibit ads. They are what allow us to consume "free" content.
Remember that next time you block one of these guys. Or go ahead and pay for that content. Slashdot's business model should lead the way!
Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely.. (Score:2, Interesting)
And exactly how do they tell that you are blocking ads and I am not? Unless you are actively reading those ads, follwing the links and then buying something! then there is really not much difference between you and me as fas as the
Re:Print papers are actually free, comparitavely.. (Score:5, Interesting)
As always, the porn industry is leading the way in online commerce.
Very recently I've noticed "Adult Friend Finder" ads are doing this -- the ads say "find women in XXX", where X is a suburb near me ... after freaking for a moment I realised that's where my ISP was.
Irony vs Coincidence (Score:3, Insightful)
My favorite way of helping people realize the difference between irony and coincidence is as follows:
"Irony deals with opposites. Coincidence deals with the same. If a rescue helicopter happened to kill the person they were trying save, that might be a form of irony. The fact you are an idiot, and unable to differenciate between irony and coincidence, my friend, is just a coincidence."
Re:Irony vs Coincidence (Score:3, Informative)
It became a common usage to talk about things which seemed connected but were not as "mere coincidence", meaning the fact that they happened together only indicated that they happened together, and nothing else. However, this grew into a colloquial use of the word "coincidence", all by itself, to mean "an occurrence of multiple events which seem connected but are not," which is, perhaps, t
Re:Irony vs Coincidence (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, it is indeed ironic that the New York Times is running a story about how a particular business model probably isn't viable, yet uses that very same business model themselves.
Here's another example: someone who posts a self-important message on slashdot correcting a misuse of the term "ironic," when in fact they are the one who is failing to recognize a legitimate case of irony.
How can we live without news??? (Score:2)
Re:How can we live without news??? (Score:2)
You miss the point. Yes, like old times, the *news* will spread, by various methods. However, what was lacking then, and what would be lacking without big news media, is credibility. We, in general, trust that the NY Times or Washington Post is telling the truth. We trusted Dan Rather, and when we fou
Re:How can we live without news??? (Score:3, Interesting)
I was under the impression that the great majority of Americans, and probably many other countries, get most of their news from TV. That's what's killing newspapers, not online competition.
Personally, I think TV news is a waste of time. I used to read a daily newspaper when I commuted, now I work from home mostly, I only buy the paper on Sundays. I get m
Unfortunately (Score:2)
Now I get my news from google and the bbc.
small survey (Score:2)
a) Which do people prefer to read while sitting at their desk in the office -- paper version or online?
b) Which do people prefer to read during their daily commute -- paper version or online?
I know what my answer is to both, and they're both different...
NYT just bought into Boston Metro, a free paper (Score:5, Interesting)
Pioneers Take the Arrows (Score:2)
So, to the first paper who takes that bold step towards pay-only, good luck. You're g
someone tell that to the Boston Globe (Score:3, Interesting)
Pretty funny, considering the Boston Globe (which is owned by the group that owns the Times) just bought The Metro, a free newspaper distributed on the MBTA (aka the T) public transit system.
The newspapers hurt themselves (Score:5, Interesting)
That's BS. Papers are advertising-delivery mechanisms, always have been.
If the papers actually thought about finding ways of putting their "real" paper advertisements (ie. NOT click-thrus) in the online edition, they'd have more effective advertising.
Alot of people actually pay for papers just for the ads. I often buy the Sunday paper just for the supermarket flyers and department store ads.
Re:The newspapers hurt themselves (Score:4, Funny)
I register on websites just for the spam.
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I'll pay, if it's worth it (Score:2)
I also pay five measly bucks to access www.weatherunderground.com each year. That's works out to about a penny a day. Certainly worth the price.
The problem with news sites is this: who wants to subscribe to only one? Sure, the far right would sign up to foxnews.com and be done with it
Subscription clearninghouse model. (Score:2)
I read a lot of magazines and newspapers online. When I'm in the US I buy most of them in paper form (including the NYT every day) but I'm in Europe most of the time and the online versions are the only reasonably fresh way to get the content I want.
I actually have paid for an online subscription to the New York Review of Books [nybooks.com] but it was a bit pricey.
What I would like to see is one place where I could pay a single price and select several online content sites to subscribe to. Even if each one has
confilct of interest (Score:2, Insightful)
I Want To Pay!!! (Score:2, Interesting)
The one reply I got from the NYTimes (supposedly from Martin Nisenholtz himself, the CEO of New York Times Digital at the time) seemed aimed at people who complain about ads but don't offer to pay to subscribe. I explained that I never "click through" on ads and tha
NYT's Announcement? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The New York Times on the Web, which is owned by The New York Times Company, has been considering charging for years and is expected to make an announcement soon about its plans."
Is this story anything more than a trial balloon to see how the Web community might react to a pay-for-use system?
It's all going according to plan (Score:2)
If people want free, they'll get it... (Score:2, Informative)
Interesting Business Model (Score:2)
"A big part of the motivation for newspapers to charge for their online content is not the revenue it will generate, but the revenue it will save"
So, in essesence, they are charging so people DON'T use their website (and instead buy the paper), instead of the other way around - brilliant!
it will survive (Score:4, Insightful)
Sites can charge for *premium* content, like special features. but for regular headline news, free will be the way to go for quite some time to come
Why all the models suck (Score:5, Insightful)
- Ad-Supported Model: Consumers get the content for free as long as they are willing to watch & click-through enough ads. Sucks because people hate/block/avoid ads (insufficient revenues), although Google might make this work.
- BBC Model: An annual government tax on PCs is used to fund a quasi-independent news gathering organization. Sucks because it adds a tax, will never happen in the U.S. (due to freedom of the press and government non-compete issues), but it could happen in the UK.
- a la Carte Model: Every content creator charges their own subcription. Sucks if you want to read more than one source.
- Flat-Rate Integrator Model: A subscriber pays a monthly subscription for all the news/content aggregated by a given company (AOL, Yahoo, Google?). Sucks because snooty brand-conscious content providers (NYT, WSJ, etc.) will never join an aggregator -- they will prefer to force people to pay separate subscriptions for separate content sources.
- Micopayment Model: A subscriber pays-per-view, the charge showing up on their monthly ISP/cellphone/credit card bill. Sucks because the cost of admin and dealing with disputed charges wipes out most of the revenues. Sucks because people hate being nickled and dimed to death.
I guess we will see which sucky model gets adopted. I suspect they all will with ad-supported and a la carte being more common than the others.What about WikiNews model? (Score:3, Interesting)
1000 articles and counting!
Cartel Needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Online news outlets have had problems supporting themselves with ad revenues (as the paper editions have always done), but that's largely their own fault. Nobody ever expects that readers will throw down the print edition of a newspaper and run off to respond to an ad, but that's exactly what advertisers seem to expect with Web ads. So, they've made them increasingly intrusive and obnoxious, insisting that everyone take notice regardless of interest or relevance. So, the public responded with ad-blocking. If ads in the print version slapped me in the face every time I opened the paper, I'd stop reading it (or at least wear a face mask) too...
NYT Still Has About 1.1 Million Print Subscribers (Score:5, Insightful)
All I see is a greater circulation now that they have an extra 1.4 million online readers.
Nowhere do I see them saying they have LOST print subscribers.
The weight of assumption is too great to claim that those online readers would have otherwise bought the print version - just like assuming people who downloaded free albums from Napster would have bought the CD.
Bottom line = this is 100% additional exposure for NYT, and perhaps other papers like it.
HAH! (Score:3, Insightful)
GJC
Where's the irony? (Score:3, Insightful)
The news(paper) business isn't about news (Score:3, Interesting)
Every newspaper in the country could give away their print editions and still make money.
The "news business" is not now, nor has it ever been, about bringing you the news. It has always been about selling advertisements.
Just because a business provides something that is of use to one set of customers does not mean that that customer base is their primary concern.
The big reason that papers want to keep you, the reader happy, is so they can sell you to more advertisers.
I wouldn't bet it on it (Score:3, Interesting)
And not only do you create an uproar, but there's always someone on the 'Net who's (1) willing to survive on a threadbare advertising-based margin for the sake of indie glory, or (2) a freebie-dishing moron who will crash and burn in a blaze of glory, but not before he's induldged the masses with months of Free Stuff that a sustainable business could not hope to afford.
The more fundamental problem here is that the 'Net is inherently an information resource with a deep basis in the belief of freedom of information and a right to privacy. It began as a network of universities exchanging research data, and it continues as a global village of topics ad nauseum. Good luck trying to make people pay for something when they can get a reasonly close approximation by simply entering a different URL. This is the beauty and the curse of online business. You're easily accessible, but so is everyone else, forcing the provider to make a huge content proposition just to get their foot in the door with the customer. For a news outlet, it's the amount and quality of stories you can put up. For a reseller, it's the size of your inventory and the ease of navigation. For a search engine, it's the speed and accuracy of your results, among other things. And so forth.
Re:Free registration still cost you! (Score:3, Informative)
For non-news registration sites, like forums, you'd probably be better off with a free email address you don't care about.
Re:Advertising just isn't enough.. is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm surprised that we haven't yet seen any DHTML techniques that counter ad blocking. I envision Alice clicking on a story and getting only the first paragraph because she has blocked the ads from that site while Bob gets the whole story because an ad that he is not blocking is rewriting the DOM to display or download the rest of the story. I think that coupled with a server side counter of the number of times the ad was actually displayed might be the basis for a better ad revenue model than pay per click.
I think innerHTML, HttpXmlRequest, and so on would be available on any browser with ad blocking capability. I think with something like this, and the user ability to turn ad blocking on and off by web site, we'd end up with marketplace forces determining what is acceptable in advertising.