{"id":1760,"date":"2009-09-15T12:29:17","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T16:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/09\/15\/would-you-pay-for-online-access-to-newspapers\/"},"modified":"2009-09-15T12:29:17","modified_gmt":"2009-09-15T16:29:17","slug":"would-you-pay-for-online-access-to-newspapers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/09\/15\/would-you-pay-for-online-access-to-newspapers\/","title":{"rendered":"Would You Pay for  Online Access to Newspapers?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After Rupert Murdoch said a couple of months ago that the Wall St. Journal is considering charging again for access to its web site, the industry has been discussing his wisdom or lack of it.&#160; Surely, the newspaper industry made a mistake in giving content away for free after the Internet became a mass market reality.&#160; But that\u2019s not to say that people would be forking over $5-10 month for subscriptions to myriad publications.&#160; In fact, a decision to do so might have had consequences on the reality of today\u2019s Internet that we can\u2019t comprehend.&#160; But it\u2019s all water under the bridge.&#160; It\u2019s free and except for Murdoch and Steven Brill of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.journalismonline.com\/quotes.php\">Journalism Online<\/a>, few executives are talking about it to their subscribers.&#160; But they\u2019re considering it.<\/p>\n<p>The question is \u201cHow would you charge, and would that make up for loss online ad revenue?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/newsosaur.blogspot.com\/2009\/09\/ideal-pay-wall-fee-may-be-less-than-you.html\">Alan Mutter<\/a> cites research that suggests it\u2019s not much.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Asked what they would spend for a monthly subscription to the newspaper\u2019s site, the respondents willing to pay for news said that they would cough up an average of $4.64. But, Harmon noted, 211 respondents, or fully 47% of the group, said they would not pay at all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If half the people won\u2019t pay at all, is an online subscription fee plausible?&#160; Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>Right now I haven\u2019t heard much about the details of a business model for online content.&#160; And there\u2019s where the devil resides.&#160; <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Would you give away online access for free to newsprint subscribers?&#160; <\/li>\n<li>Could there be co-ops formed to sell packages of content, i.e., get the Wash. Post, NY Times, Wall St. Journal, USA Today, LA Times &amp; Chicago Trib all for one price.&#160; <\/li>\n<li>Could newspapers form partnerships with visual organizations to package say CNN with the Times, the Post with ABC, etc.?<\/li>\n<li>Could they offer substantial discounts or even free access in return for participation in online marketing surveys?<\/li>\n<li>Could the purchase of an item from an online advertiser on the site, return a 3-month free subscription to the site?<\/li>\n<li>Could bloggers get discounts or free access in return for better acknowledgement of linked sources.&#160; (It\u2019s a concern of some organizations that bloggers just link to a story without also writing something like \u201caccording to the Wall St. Journal,\u201d as is the practice among traditional news organizations.&#160; Monitoring this would be a challenge.)<\/li>\n<li>Could associations negotiate discounts for access to news sites.&#160; I\u2019m not sure there is a bloggers association, but if there were, they might get a deal for their members.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But the bigger question is <em>if <\/em>news organizations decided it was worth trying and ultimately decided it was financially worth it, what would happen to the political blogosphere?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After Rupert Murdoch said a couple of months ago that the Wall St. Journal is considering charging again for access to its web site, the industry has been discussing his wisdom or lack of it.&#160; Surely, the newspaper industry made a mistake in giving content away for free after the Internet became a mass market&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/09\/15\/would-you-pay-for-online-access-to-newspapers\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[137,138,196],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}