I never thought I’d see the day, but reading yesterday’s Guardian online, I found myself agreeing with Rupert Murdoch. In an article by Paul Harris, he was advocating putting online newspapers behind a ‘pay wall’ – making them available only to paying subscribers. The idea has met with fierce resistence, but I have to admit, I’m not sure why. Is it because it comes from someone like Murdoch? I have to say I didn’t like his assertion in the article that consumers could be “forced” to change their behaviour – that “if there’s nowhere else to go”, they would pay; but I honestly don’t understand the general avertion to the idea of paying for online content, news or otherwise. People who buy newspapers quite willingly part with their hard-earned on a regular basis. The same is true of buyers of books, cds, dvds etc. Yet when any of that material is made available online, a substantial percentage of people expect to get it for free. Surely we, as 21st century humans, aren’t so simple that we only value things we can hold in our hands? Surely most of the value of any information product is in the content, not the packaging? A piece of journalism, for instance, is the product of the journalist’s training, +his/her time and talent. He or she will bring the same training, the same skills etc to bear, however the results are made available to the world – so don’t those results have monitary value, whether their packaging is tangible or intangible? Am I missing something here?
I’m not saying we should always pay the same price for electronic information as we pay for the paper version. I can see the logic behind charging less for an ebook or an epaper than for a hard copy, because production and distribution costs will be lower. There will be costs, though, associated with producing an ebook or updating a newspaper’s website, which have to be covered by someone. When the vast majority of readers were buying old-fashioned newspapers, maybe companies could afford to make their online content free to the end user, but as fewer and fewer people buy physical papers, that becomes more of a challenge for publishers. Murdoch hailed the launch of the Apple iPad in the States on Saturday as the potential saviour of the newspaper industry. If he’s right and increasing numbers of readers move away from newsprint to the screen, some kind of charging model is going to be essential to the survival of titles. The only other option is advertiser-funding – but that’s another blog, for another day!
In the meantime, if you fancy getting your hands on an iPad before its worldwide launch, check out this article in The Inquirer. Interesting marketing move …