The American Press Institute is recommending to newspaper publishers that they begin charging readers for access to their paper's websites - and suggests they move toward this subscription model as soon as possible.
The API reached this conclusion through months of study and presented it to two dozen executives of prominent news companies at a special meeting in Chicago at the end of May. Since then, a vigorous debate about the relative wisdom, or lack of it, of charging for news content online - a debate that is always simmering among industry watchers and at journalism blogs - is bubbling away.
The Future of Journalism is the Long Term Issue
At issue, those on both sides agree, is the nature of journalism itself: how it is being changed by the internet, how it gets done right now, and what it may become in the future. The news-reading public has embraced the internet as a rich source for information, freely accessing many different news outlets online. It is where the future of journalism will be. But the business model that supports good journalism and pays the journalists' salaries has not yet successfully transitioned to the internet.
A side effect of this is that there are far fewer journalists actually producing original news stories today than there were when this century began. Although cutbacks in newsrooms has been a continuing trend since before the internet age began (due to many mergers among news companies, as well as a disinclination in the industry to reinvest profits in news staff) the pace of cutbacks has increased drastically over the last two years.
The Immediate Issue is the Disappearance of Jobs
According to the State of the News Media 2009 (produced by the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism) 2008 saw the elimination of 5,900 full time professional journalism positions, which represents 11% of the 52,600 jobs counted at the beginning of the year. The report predicts: "By the end of 2009, the total job loss since the beginning of 2001 will likely pass 14,000 - roughly 25 % of the industry's news workforce in nine years."
Everyone agrees that a business model to stem, or reverse this ocean of news staff cutbacks is sorely needed. For now, it remains the considerable advertising revenue which the print product still delivers.
Although both circulation and ad revenue are declining, there are currently about 50 million newspapers distributed in the U. S. everyday, and they remain a robust advertising vehicle. At the same time online ad revenues lag way behind, representing about 10% of a news company's total income, and these cannot begin to support a newsroom.
Thus newspaper publishers, with one eye on their internet product and the future, are resolved to find revenue sources other than advertising for their online product. Good journalism is expensive to produce and those who do it have certainly earned their salaries, they reason. Some are betting that their audience will reason similarly and be willing to pay for online access.
Pay Walls are a Doomed Strategy say Critics
But the critics at journalism blogs and industry websites say that when a website restricts access to all but those who pay or buy a subscription, it has the effect of building a wall around that site. It is the worst thing you can do on the web, they contend. A website increases in value the more it is visited. Putting up a wall, thereby limiting who gets in, actually reduces its value, and decreases what is best about the web: collaboration and interactivity.
Further, opponents of pay walls insist that they have the opposite effect when it comes to producing the hoped for revenue. "Traffic and advertising revenue will fall faster than subscription revenue will rise if news sites start charging for their content," according to journalist and blogger Steve Buttry.
Buttry also cited intense competition on the internet from new ventures and citizen journalism sites.
And he linked staff cuts to a decline in the quality, "...of the newspaper sites' content...In the meantime, free community news sites have sprung up like wildflowers...and national sites such as Huffington Post, Pro Publica, and Politico...watch their traffic and advertising soar..." if the established papers charge for access.
Steve Outing is another journalist/blogger who has written extensively about pay walls and other ways to monetize content on the internet at his blog and at Editor and Publisher magazine. Outing favors a voluntary-pay system where the news consumer decides what and how much support to give.
He has written about several new services and payment technologies, including one called Kachingle, that are developing and expected to be introduced and available soon. They may not save an entire industry, but Outing calls them "a revenue stream not to be ignored."
Additional Source:
Nieman Journalism Lab
Kathlin F. Sickel - Reading and writing in print and online. So much to uncover and report. Join me; let's see what we can discover.
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