People want news now more than ever before. The demand is sky-high.
The problem …. who wants to pay for it?
From Aspen Institute President Walter Isaacson in Time:
Newspapers have more readers than ever … The problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying.
“You gotta get away from this notion that good reporting has got to be given away for free on the internet,” Isaacson recently told The Daily Show.
Sounds similar to what the music industry has been saying for years.
WHAT’S ISAACSON’S PLAN?
He wants to charge people “micro-charges” for stories they read stories online, as stated by Daily Show host Jon Stewart. (sounds similar to iTunes, no?)
From Isaacson’s Time article “How to Save Your Newspaper“:
The key to attracting online revenue, I think, is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment. We need something like digital coins or an E-ZPass digital wallet — a one-click system with a really simple interface that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge.
WHO OWNS THE NEWS?
The current online model makes news orgs too dependent on advertisers, and shouldn’t media org’s loyalties lie with readers and not advertisers? Isaacson asks.
Meanwhile, the biggest ad dollars are going to aggregators like the Huffington Post, he adds.
Stewart proposes setting up licensing deals where content providers can make agreements with aggregators to bundle content get some money back to the original content creators. Would that work? Would any aggregator go for a deal like that?
SHOULD YOU PAY FOR IT?
What do you think? Should you pay for the news through micro-payments online? Would you use an iTunes-like system for reading news?
What other revenue models should news pursue?
Check out Isaacson on The Daily Show and let me know what you think.
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comment, testing,testing, just making sure this works