Paying for Crikey
A few days ago I took a small plunge and paid for a subscription to Crikey. That isn’t too remarkable, people subscribe to all sorts of things. In my case it was a considered decision, after all I can get the squatter version of Crikey forever and there are plenty of other news sites around that I can trawl for free. However the recent Fairfax decision to attack its editorial workforce illustrated what is going to be the biggest single problem with mass media in the not too distant future, the question of how to make the business of journalism pay.
Now I decided to have a quick whip around to see what else is on offer as far as paying for content on the web. Lo and behold top of the pops award goes to the AFR who will give you a year’s worth of access to afr.com for only thirteen hundred bucks! Mind you they appear to charge you about half price if you already get the newspaper version so I suppose that’s an incentive.
On the other hand the Australian is available electronically for the same price as the print version which I suppose is an improvement, except who wants a complete replication of a newspaper delivered to your already overloaded in box.
You can get the Age delivered to your doorstep, newspaper style for a $1.00 a day but strangely they don’t appear to have an online version unlike the Oz. They are not alone, if you toddle off to isubscribe you can sign up for all manner of printed magazines but not a single electronic version.
Some of this might be due to concerns about plagarism and unauthorised redistribution once something hits the web, but such concerns have not prevented things like iGoogle popping up.
A few newspapers have adopted electronic versions similar to the Oz, notably the New York Times, Le Monde and the Guardian in the UK just to name a few. They offer you a electronic replica of the paper version for a comparable price plus access to the archives. It seems like a reasonable deal but it also seems to miss the point that newspapers are the product of the print age, people who want their news via the web aren’t really interested in paying for a rehash of what they can get from a newspaper. This point was illustrated by Antony Loewenstein when interviewed recently on Newshour who suggested that younger audiences are looking for a media that reflects the values of their generation. He also made the point that young people view existing media outlets with a degree of mistrust.
Still newspapers and Radio/TV stations command a sizeable amount of advertising revenue, plus they do have substantial existing audience reach. Although the numbers might be slowly declining, they are not in imminent danger of collapse. What is evident is that a cultural shift is unfolding which is bound to bring new players and different approaches that will eventually replace the institutions we currently have. Making the web pay remains problematic and creates uncertainty but hopefully the journalistic skills and traditions will survive. Although individual bloggers are often castigated for unsophisticated and factually questionable work, it may be that as individual web sites develop and gain an audience they too become more conscious of their reputation and adopt practices that reflect the same ideals that are currently the creed of existing journalism.
