Who’s going to get the bill?
Which side of the pay wall are you on?
The issue over paying for news content online is a big right now – you can ask anyone, not just those from the industry, and they will have an opinion. But rather unnervingly, the opinion is mostly negative. In other words, the general news-consuming public don’t want to pay for news content when they read it online.
For an assignment a few weeks ago, I was asking the people on Cardiff’s Queen Street whether they would pay for the news they read online. Every single person, before answering, looked at me like I was mad woman. “No, why would I want to do that?” followed most of the answers.
But someone’s got to pay somewhere along the line. News online is still news and it uses up resources like any other print newspaper, which can cost anything from 20p – £1.00.
However, are there certain ”types” of content that people would pay for? Rob Andrews, editor of the UK branch of PaidContent raised an interesting idea last week in a guest lecture. Perhaps, some news outlets that write to a certain specialised market, can get away with charging for the content they put online.
For example, consider some business titles like The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, both of which charge for some of their online content. This has worked because, according to Rob, their readers are probably quite wealthy (so can afford to do so) and they may need the information for work.
The same could be said for specialist business magazines like Farmers Weekly or Motor Transport - publications that deliver industry news and information that can be found no where else, that the readers will need.
It’s a nice idea, and for a brief minute gives the industry just a glimmer of hope. But what about general consumer news? Could we charge for the non-specialist everyday news that we read on the front page of The Sun website? Probably not, given the opinions of the general public mentioned previously, who have been used to accessing free content since time began (well, since the internet. Nothing counts before then, right?)
It would be like putting the genie back into the bottle, and nobody hates massive change more than the general public do.
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