fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Author: Michael Higdon | 02.25.2009

I’m responding to a fellow young blogger who listed the Top 10 reasons why publications should not charge readers in micropayments. The basic tenents are:

1. Nothing beats free.
2. This completely compromises the link economy.
3. It’s very 2000.
4. It’s uncreative.
5. It’s failed in the past.
6. Micropayments puts open-source journalism years behind.
7. It’s never been done before.
8. We’re not talking about ringtones here.
9. It leaves out the reader.
10. Give them a reason to pay!

Andrew O’Dell sums up my reasons for disagreeing with Emily.

It’s also important to consider alternatives outside of what you’re used to. Consider the Web as only a current rendition of the Internet. Browsers are only a limited technology to create a coherent semblance of information. The Web is merely a platform in the same way a newspaper is a platform and an operating system is a platform. Consider the Web you’re used to as the GUI of the Internet.

More importantly though, the Web we use now is just words on a screen. I mean that as hyperbole, but there are very limited applications on the current Web and almost none of them are very interactive. Interactive in the sense of participatory and live and moving not interactive in the “I can click this and things happen” sense.

The Web is really anything you want it to be but we are limited by Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc. Right now the web has programmed outcomes, it does not adapt (it is dynamic but that is not adaptation). I want the Semantic Web (and here and here and a great video here):

The semantic web is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing, and combining information on the web.

Taking that to the next level, consider the various forms of making money in a capitalist society. There are sponsors and customers, that’s about it. Right now news is sponsored through advertising; readers/users are not customers.

When people talk about “let’s build news for readers” then I think we should take them literally: charge readers. Because supposedly micropayments are “by publishers for publishers” well then news is by journalists for advertisers. Readers are nowhere in the journalism equation. Any other product we buy is by some company for consumers; news is not – given the logic I’ve read other places.

I would agree that we do in fact pay for a product and not the actual elements of that product. We pay for the paper regardless of what’s on it. We have not paid for the content. Newspapers and websites are funded by their empty space - that is, advertising space. Journalism does not technically make any money at all. That’s the problem and the necessary paradigm shift.

Micropayments in the current discussion severely limit social networking abilities. So we must think beyond the current iteration of micropayments. If you were going to create such an awesome paradigm shift as to save newspapers, why would you do it on the Web we use now?

You wouldn’t. So answer your own question of “be creative” and “it’s so 2000.”

Invent something new. Invent something so cool that it does to news what Apple has done for the flashlight and the level (iPhone apps). That is, invent an application centered around information. Ah, but that’s what the browser is for, right? Invent a news browser – a News GUI, a News operating system. OR information-based operating system. A Semantic Browser.

Jack Shafer talks about this on Slate:

That iTunes is a free-standing application and not contained inside a browser, as is the Amazon music store, is not accidental, and I reckon that its “outside the browser” design has played some role in its success. Consumers have been conditioned to think that content delivered by a browser is supposed to be free. They get annoyed when they encounter a pay wall on a browser but are more psychologically open to the nonbrowser Web interface.

And then charge for content that can only be found by using this software. And get everyone on board with it so there’s no where else to go to find alternatives that are worthwhile.