fix journalism a conversation about journalism’s future

Author: Michael Higdon | 03.03.2009

Alan Mutter and I appear to be one of the more fervent pro-Micropayment people out there at the moment with Clay Shirky and Jeff Jarvis fighting against it (and not even actively). I, however, believe Shirky’s and Jarvis’ ideas are stuck firmly in 1998 failure mode while Mutter and I are looking forward to reinventing.

One of the main points from Shirky and Jarvis is: readers won’t pay for content. And: they will just go elsewhere.

I want to talk about why those are wrong.

First, check out Alan Mutter’s amazing post about micropayments here. He reflects and expounds upon a lot of what I’ve written this week as well as thoughts I haven’t written yet. Be sure to read Steve Outing’s comment at the bottom, as he includes good extra steps.

“They will go elsewhere”

In short, Mutter suggests (I bolded for emphasis):

If we are going to save the tradition of professional journalism, it is vital for publishers to begin producing content that is sufficiently unique, authoritative and valuable to motivate consumers to pay for it. [...] People will pay for all manner of content on the web, it if it is thoughtfully conceived and marketed. [...] The trick to charging for content, therefore, is coming up with unique and valuable information that people will pay for. The converse is to let information be free that ought to be free. Things, for example, like the life-threatening community emergency in Santa Barbara.

Absolutely right. The argument that people will go elsewhere doesn’t jive in one-newspaper towns such as Reno or even San Francisco. If the Reno Gazette-Journal or San Francisco Chronicle started charging for content readers would have absolutely nowhere else to go for local information involving courts, schools, people and business. The New York Times certainly does not cover Reno or San Francisco like readers need it to be covered. And neither do any of the alt publications in town.

For national content or general interest content, obviously anyone can go anywhere. You don’t charge to tell people Obama is president or that the stimulus package exists. But where do you go to learn how the stimulus package will be applied to your city or county? That’s content you can charge for.

I also agree that life-threatening breaking news should be free. That’s news that is truly a public good.

“Readers won’t pay for content”

Again, where does this come from? I’ve actually only read other journalists bitching about this one. In comments on many stories about the news, readers continue to say they would be willing to pay for content to keep “X” publication alive. The New York Times especially has readers who are willing. Those who are not usually dislike the publication to begin with.

But really, if they had no other choice, would it matter?

And anyway, here is a list of things we pay for that “should” be free but are not (as a note, I don’t think they should be free but following the train of thought that information should be free leads us to these things as well):

• Private conversations via intangible cell phone minutes
• Access to the almighty “free” Internet. The information on the Internet is not free because I have to pay to get to it. But the sad thing is that the people producing that information don’t make jack squat while the gatekeepers make tons of money for allowing unreliable, slow service to the Internet.
• Public goods/works: infrastructure (roads, water, gas, electricity), medical/fire services, law enforcement
• Medical care

There are many more things that “should” be free. But they’re not. So I don’t see why it’s such an incomprehensible stretch to charge people for professional work, seeing as that’s what our country (and many others) thrive on in order to operate.