Pay for Online News Content
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
An article recently appeared on Brandrepublic about how the Telegraph, a popular news source in the UK, is planning on revamping its website, possibly including both free and paid-for content at the same time.
The idea is that those browsing the site without a paid subscription would be able to get at least a general sense of the news, but to receive further details they would have to pay. It is believed this "hybrid" method of news website management would be more effective than a completely free or a completely subscription based service.
While I consider this method better than a complete subscription to view any content like The Daily, I still think a system like this will be relatively unsuccessful as long as other services provide completely free content on the web.
I can see this doing nothing but whetting the appetite of someone who wants to know more about an issue, forcing them to go looking for it at another website with open content. I guess we'll just have to see how this works out, though. I can see online journalism evolving in a couple of different ways, but I don't think this one will work very well in the long term.
Photo Credit: Joe Anderson via Creative Commons
2 comments:
News should not have to cost us anything. It is ethically unjust for citizens to pay any amount of money just to keep up with their surroundings online. I realize organizations need to roll in the dough to stay alive, but find other ways to collect the cash. Don't take it out of your readers' pockets.
I would agree that most people will probably go elsewhere for free information. The question is, what will happen if eventually these free information sites no longer exist? As for now, probably only newspaper buffs and dedicated readers will be willing to pay a price.
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