My original New Zealand media people on Twitter list is still available on this site. It’s been updated many times with two new entries yesterday and four updates. If you think you should be on the list, or if you are on the list and think your entry needs to change, please get in touch.

In addition to the HTML list I’ve also created a Twitter list:@billbennettnz/new-zealand-media-people.

Everyone who is on the HTML list is now on the Twitter list.

Advertising sales revenue is the money publishers make from selling ‘space’ in their titles. Most publishers set aside printed pages or parts of printed pages for advertisers. The number of pages compared to the total number of pages in a public  is known in the business as the advertising ratio. Paid for publications have a lower advertising ratio than free publications.

Advertisements fall into two main categories:

• Display advertisements are larger and often more colourful – they can have highly creative text and images.
• Classified advertisements are smaller and often only text with a minimum of graphics.

Magazines typically sell display advertising by the page, although they offer double page spreads, half pages and other formats. Newspapers will sell pages, but they also sell column centimetres (or column inches). Classifieds sell as column centimetres, as lines of text or in some cases by the word.

The more you buy the cheaper it gets

As a rule, the more advertising an advertiser buys, the cheaper the rate per column centimetre (or page if they are buying magazine ads). So a full-page is cheaper than two half pages and so on.

Publishers also offer advertisers discounts if they commit to buying a series of advertising over a period such as a year or six months. So, booking a year’s worth of advertisements in a monthly magazine is cheaper than buying 12 single advertisements.

Some advertising positions attract a premium rate. On newspapers this would be the front page and maybe the front pages of the internal sections. Magazines typically charge extra for the back cover and possibly the inside front cover. Successful titles can also get away with charging a premium for early right hand pages or other attractive sites.

Agencies and commission

In some industry sectors, advertising is largely placed by specialist media buying companies who develop strategies for their clients and negotiate with publishers. These companies earn their income as a commission. Typically this is between 10 to 20 percent of the booking’s value.

In return for the commission, media buying agencies contract to pay their invoices by a set date after publication – typically a month or so after the advertisements appear.

Advertisers who buy their own space are known as direct clients in the industry. They often haggle over prices, but unless they are large-scale buyers of advertising have less clout than agencies who can buy in bulk. It often harder to collect money from direct clients than from agencies.

Rate cards

Publishers issue rate cards which show the prices or rates for each type of advertisement. Historically they were cards, but now they are usually available online, try Googling the term to see some. Rate cards prices are often, but not always negotiable. They also describe available advertising formats. Depending on circumstances rates shown on rate cards are negotiable.

When an advertiser or a buying agency buys advertising they are usually buying reach that is a publication’s ability to reach so many potential customers.

Advertorial

People in the business use the term advertorial when publishers offer advertising linked to editorial features, or in some cases when a publication’s editorial integrity itself is up for sale.

Advertorial deals come in many flavours. Many publications are more or less entirely made up of advertorial material – if an advertiser pays for space they are given a degree of say over what appears in the publication’s editorial content.

More credible titles wall off areas of content for advertorial projects. These might be clearly marked with terms like “advertising supplement” or “special advertising feature”, but it isn’t transparent to the reader.

Some publishers simply run editorial-style material provided by advertisers and charge for it. Others allow advertisers to send copy for inclusion alongside paid advertisements.

Publishers may or may not allow advertisers to sign off on their advertorial content. Some publishers will have journalists write advertiser-friendly copy for these sections, others keep up a strict demarcation between editorial and advertising.

It’s about the business model

As a rule, free publications are more likely to run advertorial and compromise editorial integrity for commercial consideration than paid-for titles. Paid titles are less likely to take this approach. Some paid titles have little in the way of advertising and charge a hefty premium for quality editorial content. This works best if they can manage a high circulation.

Have I missed anything here? Do you have any questions about how this works?

Other articles in this series:

Where the money comes from: - an introduction to traditional print publishing business models
Copy sales: – how traditional print publishers make money from selling copies

Image by Rowen Atkinson via Flickr

Practical subscription models are possible. Micro-payments need a lot more work and may never be a serious option.

Many traditional newspaper publishers plan to charge for online news and other material. Or maybe it would be more correct to say they hope to charge.

Currently online publishers mainly earn money from advertising. They say, with some justification, this doesn’t generate enough revenue to pay for the teams of journalists and editors who produce online newspapers and magazines. It certainly doesn’t deliver the ‘rivers of gold’ profits they enjoyed back in the heyday of newspaper publishing.

But publishers wishing to switch from an advertising revenue model to a charging model or a mixture of advertising and pay-to-read face an up-hill struggle.

For a start, only a small percentage of existing readers are willing to pay any money. Judging by what I’ve heard from people  in the industry, publishers believe somewhere between one and 10 percent of existing readers would be willing to hand over money.

The precise number depends on many factors including the value of the material being offered. But most publishers who’ve tried this in the past have only managed to sell paid subscriptions to one or two percent of online readers.

How much does a single page cost?

Let’s for arguments sake here agree that 10 percent of an online publication’s existing readers would be prepared to pay for content. Remember this number is higher than anyone appears to achieved to date.

This means in order for the paywall to generate as much money as the current advertising model each paying reader will have to contribute as much revenue as ten existing readers.

Online advertising is generally charged by the CPM (cost per thousand). Typically publishers can earn somewhere in the region of $50 for every thousand page views (I’m using indicative numbers and not precise numbers). This is 5 cents per page view. Then to make the same money a single online page would cost 50 cents to read.

If publishers can only convert 2 percent of existing free readers into paying readers the single page price would rise to $2.50 – which is close to the A$3.50 The Australian Financial Review charges for each story.

Charging by the page for online newspapers

While billing users by the page to view online content may look attractive to publishers, it’s not a cost free transaction. The price of delivering a single web page to a browser is so small it is in effect negligible. The cost of adding a per page billing system to a site with ecommerce gateways, security and the paywall technology is slightly higher – though still small compared with the $2.50 fee calculated above.

However, that fee would only replace online advertising revenue. As Rupert Murdoch says, the existing revenue isn’t enough to pay the bills, let alone make a profit. On this basis the cost charged per page would need to rise to at least $3.00, but let’s say for the sake of argument Murdoch needs to make $3.50 per sold online page to cover costs and keep his shareholders happy.

The micro-payment price is just plain wrong

There’s something very wrong with charging readers US$3.50 to read a single online story, or for that matter the A$3.50 charged by the Australian Financial Review. It only costs $3.00 to by a print edition of the newspaper, containing somewhere in the region of 64 tabloid pages. The physical newpaper has been written and edited by a large team, printed on dead trees, wrapped up and distributed across an entire continent to arrive at a local newsagent, who takes a 30 percent or so slice of the cover price. It has at least 100 stories – usually plenty of really good reading – and vast amounts of valuable information. All for 50 cents less than the cost of a single online page that cost the AFR’s publisher nothing to deliver to your screen.

Not only that, but the printed paper is your property for as long as you want. It’s hard saving or downloading the AFR’s online content – though you can print it out at your own cost – probably another 10 cents or so on top of the $3.50 you’ve already paid.

Similar logic applies to any other newspaper sold piecemeal online – it’s not really a sensible purchase. There are times when it makes sense to pay for the occasional story, but over the long haul it is much cheaper to buy the print edition. In fact a subscription to the print edition is 20 percent cheaper than buying the paper each day directly from a newsagent, which makes purchasing stories online relatively more expensive.

What about digital subscriptions?

If buying online stories piecemeal doesn’t make sense, what about digital subscriptions? The model closest to home for me is The Australian Financial Review which charges A$75 a month for access to the digital edition only – that’s the same price as a subscription to the print edition. Which from a reader point of view makes far more sense, but doesn’t pass on any of the savings involved in not printing or distributing the physical paper. Given the costs involved, the margins on this would be huge – which may cause resentment from readers, though probably not the well-heeled types who buy the AFR. But it’s important to recognise the Financial Review covers a specialist niche and its readers can afford to pay a premium online – though by all accounts not many do. It would be much harder for a general newspaper to charge this kind of price.

It’s pretty clear after looking at the numbers that publishers are going to follow the subscription model for online content sales and not micro-payments and selling stories one-by-one. Maybe it’ll work for Murdoch, after all, this is the man who convinced half the western world to pay for television – something that had previously been free. Yet there are other complications. As The Sydney Morning Herald points out Murdoch’s claims that readers would be willing to pay for ‘quality journalism’ is, well, something of a talking point.

Also, there are are major privacy concerns about Murdoch’s plans. As Wendy Davis explains at MediaPost, Murdoch wants to collect reader data – that’s not a move to endear yourself to customers when you’re about to hit them up with new charges.

As I’ve said before, as a journalist and editor, I’ve a vested interest in publishers finding ways to make readers pay for editorial. Unlike many I’m not in principle against the idea, I’m just don’t think it can work without major disruption and top-to-bottom reform of the entire publishing industry. Only a fool would dismiss Murdoch, he knows the media business inside out, but this could yet turn out to be News Corporation’s Vietnam.  We’ll know soon enough.

Julie Starr’s Evolving Newsroom is a great New Zealand website about journalism and what we once thought of as the newspaper business. Starr writes as much about the technology underpinning modern journalism as the nitty gritty of the subject itself. While I doubt we’d agree on everything, I count her among the people who ‘get it’.

Recommended recent taster: Who pays for investigative journalism?

There’s no serious New Zealand counterpart to The Australian’s weekly Media section, which also appears online as part of the paper’s website. Given the section is part of Australia’s national daily newspaper, the focus is firmly on that country’s media, but there’s a huge overlap with New Zealand’s media industry and, anyway, the Australian does a good job of covering the big picture stories which affect us all. It’s not entirely unbiased — after all The Australian is part of Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited — and often shows Fairfax in an less flattering light and pulls its punches over News’ properties, but overall the coverage is well balanced. While the print section is weekly, the online news is updated regularly throughout the week.

Recommended recent taster: Free-to-air TV advertising income plunges

Another great Australian resource is the online-only mUmBRELLA which covers media and marketing. The site takes a much more light-hearted approach than the Australian, which can be a bit heavy at times. It also tends to focus on short, snappy pieces with a healthy dose of reader comments. From my point of view there’s a lower signal-to-noise ratio. Nevertheless it’s on my daily read list and I love it, although I hate the typographic silly buggers with the name.

Recommended recent taster: PRs turn focus to bloggers rather than journos

As the name suggests the anonymous writer of Freelance Unbound is a freelance journalist. He worked in the trade press in the UK and does a little teaching as well. I like the site, partly because it moves smoothly between big picture ‘think’ pieces and snappy little items — there’s often some fun and plenty of good reader comments. There’s some great material covering the point where the world of traditional journalism collides with social media and other online communications tools. The site also has an excellent voice, although I suspect that’s just the author’s natural voice.

Recommended recent taster: Blogs are dying. Great news for bloggers… and journalism graduates

Publishing 2.0 is an American site with a heavy focus on web publishing, it’s blurb says it is about “how technology is transforming media”. A lot of the material appears to be aimed at people managing traditional media companies – which in American tends to mean large corporation. Nevertheless there’s plenty of valuable ideas and news.

Recommended recent taster: Why we link: A brief rundown of the reasons your news organization needs to tie the Web together

So far I’ve carefully trying to avoid using the word ‘blog’. This isn’t because I’m some print era fogey in a state of digital denial. As far as I’m concerned it’s a term that conjures up the wrong image. But there’s simply no getting around the online journalism blog which appears to be written and edited by professionals exhibiting the very skills most bloggers seem to disdain. The site is primarily British, with correspondents from around the world. A lot of the material is aimed at showing switched on journalists how to use technology to improve their work.

Recommended recent taster: Chris Anderson’s ‘Free’: Not worth buying

I don’t always agree with Martin Hurst who sporadically makes entries on his Ethical Martini site, but his ideas are usually worth reading. Hirst is an academic who teaches at Auckland University of Technology and specialise in media ethics.

Recommended recent taster:The revolution will not be Twitter-ized

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• 12 Things Newspapers Should Do to Survive (mashable.com)

New Zealand journalists and media organisations on Twitter:

Newspapers, radio and TV stations:

@3NewsNZ – TV 3 News
@BusinessTalk – Business Talk
@ComputerworldNZ — Computerworld New Zealand
@dompost – The Dominion-Post
@DunedinNews – Dunedin News
@Karere – Maori News
@LoveThisPaper — Kim Gillespie, editor Wanganui Chronicle
@NewstalkZB – Newstalk ZB Radio
@nzherald – The New Zealand Herald
@NZPAnews — NZPA News
@PressNewsroom – The Christchurch Press
@nzresellernews — Reseller News
@NZstuff — stuff.co.nz
@rnz_news – Radio New Zealand News
@TheNBR – The National Business Review
@TVNZNews – TVNZ News
@upthisway – This way up – Radio NZ consumer show
@WaikatoTimes – Waikato Times (appears to be dormant)

Magazines

@coupdemain — coup de main digital magazine
@discounderworld — Monthly digital magazine
@goodmag — Good magazine
@idealogmag — Idealog magazine
@ITBrief – IT Brief, trade title for computer professionals
@NetGuide – New Zealand NetGuide
@real_groove — Real Groove
@ripitupNZ — Rip It Up
@salientmagazine — Student magazine from Victoria University of Wellington
@TheGrooveGuide — The Groove Guide
@UnlimitedMagNZ — Unlimited

Journalists and New Zealand media people

@AdrienneRewi — Adrienne Rewi, freelance journalist, travel guide writer
@AliIkram — Ali Ikram, TV3 journalist
@AnaSamways — Ana Samways, New Zealand Herald Sideswipe columnist
@andemac – Ande Macpherson, Group Interactive Director Mediaworks Radio, commentator & blogger
@asiapublishing — Doug Green, Asia Publishing Group nzmanufacturer.co.nz
@bloggerbb — entertainment editor for the NZ Herald online
@billbennettnz— Bill Bennett, tech journalist, freelance, Auckland
@blairensor —  Blair Ensor, eporter, Marlborough Express, specialising in rural
@bjdooley – Brian J. Dooley, tech journalist and independent analyst
@CallMeDrAl — Subeditor, Unlimited magazine
@CateOwen — Cate Owen, digital person for TV3 Sunrise
@Chrisbellnz — Chris Bell, freelance
@ChrisKeall – Chris Keall, freelance, NBR technology writer
@Cliptec – Phillip Smith, Cliptec media monitoring
@ColinJacksonNZ – tech commentator
@craig_martin — Managing Director, Indie Travel Media Ltd
@dubdotdash – Peter McLennan, designer, dj, blogger, muso, renaissance man
@ethicalmartini – Martin Hirst, associate professor AUT
@GreerMcDonald —Greer McDonald, social media editor, stuff.co.nz
@HamishBarwick – Hamish Barwick, Fairfax Business Group
@HamishCR — Rebel producer, director, presenter, Throng TV
@hoskingonzb — Mike Hosking, Newstalk ZB
@jamesc0leman – James Coleman, radio and TV presenter
@JohnJCampbell — TV current affairs host and Bro’town star
@jonohutchison — TV3 News and Sunrise reporter
@juhasaarinen — Juha Saarinen, freelance
@julietspeedy — TV3 journalist
@KATEHAWKESBY — Freelance
@kiranchug — Kiran Chug, reporter at The Dominion Post
@lindajmartin — Managing Editor, Indie Travel Media Ltd
@littlehigh — Paul Reynolds, radio commentator
@lukeappleby — Luke Appleby, tech blogger for stuff.co.nz
@macnzMark — Mark Webster, freelance IT writer, Mac specialist, NetGuide, Macthemag, Mac Planet
@markrevington — Mark Revington, Unlimited editor
@Michael_Forbes — Dominion Post reporter for the Manawatu-Wanganui region.
@miroslab —  Miro Slabbert, PC World art director
@mitchellhall — Mitchell Hall, NBR reporter
@monty64 — Denise Montgomery, TV News Producer, Producer ONE News @ 4:30
@MrsDesperate — Bronwyn Marquardt, journalist, travel writer, author, blogger
@NatashaUtting — Natasha Utting, Campbell Live
@nathanbeaumont — Nathan Beaumont, education reporter at The Dominion Post.
@nztaylor — Martin Taylor, director, digital publishing forum
@PatrickCrewdson — Patrick Crewdson, web editor at The Dominion Post
@petergnz — Peter Griffin, Science Media Centre
@radiowammo — Glenn Williams, radio host Kiwi FM
@rgoodchild — Rachel Goodchild
@RodCheeseman — TV3
@robonz — Rob O’Neill, Computerworld New Zealand editor
@scottbartley — Scott Bartley, reviews editor at PC World
@simonhendery – Simon Hendry, New Zealand Herald tech writer
@SineadBoucher – Sinead Boucher, digital editor for Fairfax New Zealand
@SitaMitaBita – Sita Narsi, designer extraordinaire at Fairfax Business Group
@someonegetsteve — Steve Leon, new media producer, In-business mag and others
@staceyvivienne — Stacey Wood, Dominion Post Capital Day reporter
@starrjulie – Julie Starr, Editor-in-Residence at Wintec’s School of Media Arts in Hamilton, runs the Evolving Newsroom
@stevebwriter — Stephen Bell, Computerworld Wellington reporter
@TedGibbons – Ted Gibbons, editor PC World New Zealand
@vmcm1 — Virginia McMillan, freelance, health business
@WazL — CEO at APN online

Public relations and communications

@adagebusiness — marketing and media consultant to small business and not-for-profit groups
@AngelaMoriarty — communications manager for Positively Wellington Tourism
@Belindanash — AUT communications manager
@BulletPR – Bullet Public Relations
@campbellh — Campbell Hodgetts
@caanz – Catherine Arrow, public relations consultant
@ClaireDel — Claire Del
@craigadolph — Media Planner/Buyer at GSL Network
@ericalloyd — Erica Lloyd, Network PR
@HarcourtsToni — Harcourts NZ communications manager, Toni Skiffington
@Ideasshop — PR company
@jossdeb — Joss Debreceny, senior comms advisor at Ministry of Education
@iChild — Monica Wales, Media planner and buyer, ad industry blogger
@julielandry — Julie Landry
@KevinPtak — Kevin Ptak, Porter Novelli Public Relations
@louisvanwyk — Louis van Wyk, Tuanz
@markomPR — Markom Public Relations
@networkpr — Network Public Relations
@paulbrislen — Paul Brislen, communications at Vodafone NZ
@Paul_Matthews – Paul Matthews, Bullet Public Relations
@paulpursuit — Paul O’Leary, Pursuit PR
@samfarrow — Sam Farrow
@SarahPSparks — Sarah Sparks, director of markomPR
@shineprjack — Jacky James, Shine PR
@simcmanus — Simon Mcmanus, McManus Tourism Communications
@sknightly — Stephen Knightly, Pursuit PR
@The_Saurus — Rachael Joel
@wagthedogagency —  Full service digital agency
@watchthewitter — Jenny Wilmshurst, marketing planning & communications

Bloggers and online media

@althecat — Alastair Thompson, Scoop Media
@audaciousgloop – Simon Young, writer
@benkepes — Ben Kepes
@bernardchickey — Bernard Hickey, business journalist, runs Interest.co.nz
@deadball — Sports blog run by music industry types
@dpfdpf — David Farrar, Kiwiblog
@freitasm — Mauricio Freitas, Geekzone
@justinflitter — Social CRM, helpdesk and customer service related blogger
@KiwiblogDPF — Kiwiblog
@Kunal_Kripalani — Kunal Kripalani, social media guidelines blogger for policy & strategy
@mrsgooding — Christine Gooding, shannonsway
@nzben — Ben Gracewood, TV gadget reviewer
@philbilbrough — Phil Bilbrough, Scoop
@publicaddress — Russell Brown, blogger, journalist and TV presenter
@roadcycling – RoadCycling.co.nz NZ’s Online Cycling Magazine
@rww —Richard MacManus, Read Write Web
@Scoopnz – Scoop

This list is not comprehensive, if you’d like to be included, or you know someone who should be added, please leave the twitter name, link and a few descriptive words in the comments below and I’ll make the additions when I have time. Also, please let me know if any corrections are needed.

There’s a similar list of Australian media people at The Earley Edition: 501 Australian Journalists and News Media People on Twitter

While I have your attention you may be interested in reading:

Can Twitter be journalism?
More on Twitter as journalism

Australian tech journalist Renai LeMay says Twitter is journalism. He’s right but only up to a point.

LeMay writes;

Journalists are not simply using Twitter to promote their own work and get news tips. This is nowhere near to being the whole truth. In fact, audiences are using Twitter as a powerful tool to engage with journalists directly and force a renewal of journalism and media along lines that audiences have long demanded.

Well some are.

I follow about 25 Australian and New Zealand journalist on Twitter, about the same number of public relations people and a handful of both from elsewhere in the world. As an unscientific rule of thumb, I’d say only 40 percent of journalists are using Twitter in the way LeMay suggests.

About the same number simply use it as a way of promoting their online stories. In other words they aren’t joining the conversation, they are simply using Twitter as a broadcast medium. I suspect, but can not prove, this usually is because of dumb managerial restrictions on their use of the technology. A small percentage dabble in engagement, going on and off-line depending on their workload (I’m guilty of switching off Twitter when there’s a looming deadline and a huge number of words to write).

The rest are still in the dull “morning tweeps” and “I had muesli for breakfast” or the more disturbing narcissistic school of Twittering.

Incidentally, Mr LeMay is worth following. @renailemay

via Twitter’s impact on media and journalism « Renai LeMay.

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• Journo launches tech newswire Delimiter in bid to challenge AAP (mumbrella.com.au)
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Dan Conover at Xark has written a great piece arguing against the newspaper publishers’ campaign to charge readers for on-line news.

Conover describes the move as a suicide pact. While describing the idea that readers should pay for the professionally created content they consume as reasonable, he says attempts to force them to pay are “post-rational”.

He points out some of the main flaws, including the fact that consumers don’t want to pay for news and that previous attempts to make them pay have failed. But Conver points out newspaper publishers are no longer listening to reason and are determined to plough ahead with paid content.

Speaking as someone who has spent more than 30 years working as a journalist – most of that time on newspapers – I’d love to see publishers find a way to make on-line news profitable.  But it’s a fantasy.

If Fairfax can only convince a handful of Australian business people to stump up cash to read the highly-targeted and immensely useful Australian Financial Review on-line, what chance to other newspaper publishers have?

You need nerves of steel to bet against Rupert Murdoch, but this time, he and the other newspaper owners are going in the wrong direction – readers are not going to pay to read news. And they definitely will not do so while there are free alternatives.

Xark!: The newspaper suicide pact.

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There’s a major debate in publishing circles about whether consumers can be made to pay for online content. Rupert Murdoch recently moved from the free content camp to thinking out loud about charging readers micropayments to view news content (see Will readers pay for Murdoch’s web content?)

Now Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal has announced it will be pressing ahead with a micropayment scheme in addition to more conventional subscriptions.

Reuters columnist Eric Auchard looked at some possible newspaper business models for The Guardian in Pay a small toll to read this news story.  He concludes; “the newspaper industry must find a way to make work one or several of these proposals to make consumers pay for online news. The alternative is to accept that newspapers have had their day.”

Why micropayments?

In theory the subscription model should be a perfect way for delivering digital content. In practice only a handful of businesses have managed to succeed in persuading consumers to pay an upfront fee for pure online content – the best known examples are the adult sites.

There have been famous failures to attract subscription revenue. Slate magazine started out free, then attempted to move to the subscription model. Less than five percent of readers were willing to pay even a modest fee to read the magazine. It has since returned to the ad supported free online newspaper business model. This five percent figure crops up a lot in the context of online subscriptions, but few publishers have ever reached such giddy heights.

Buy print subscription, get digital free

There are some interesting variations on the subscription theme, for example The Economist a British weekly newspaper-magazine has an excellent web site. Initially only subscribers to the print edition had full access to the entire site. Today, The Economist also offers a digital only subscription, it’s about 20 percent of the price of a print subscription. The New Scientist has similar offers.

Another variation is where Internet users can trade their personal information for a subscription. The New York Times allows access to a basic set of pages, but for full access you have to fill out a questionnaire. Fairfax Media’s Stuff site in New Zealand allows registered users to customise pages and news feeds. Fairfax’s Australian sites let registered users take part in competitions and receive custom alerts. In some cases the data from these schemes is used for simple information gathering, in other cases once you’ve signed up you’ll see a never-ending stream of spam.

One reason why many content publishers haven’t yet managed to sell subscriptions is that online payment is still based on credit cards. Although many companies have attempted to introduce micropayment systems, none have taken off. Credit card transactions are simply not economically viable below, say, $10.

Rocky road to micropayments

Although as a journalist and ex-publisher I’d love to find ways of turning my skills into a reliable income once more, I see three big problems with getting readers to pay for online content.

First, for readers to pay money, content has to be valuable and consistently good. The Economist and the New Scientist offer consistently good reading and are reliable, credible information sources.

The same cannot be said for all newspapers. The most popular news stories online tend to be trashy tabloid pieces about celebrities – often hinting at sex or with vaguely sexy pictures. These drag in the punters for online advertising, but few people would pay money for this material.

Second, micropayment schemes would send price signals to journalists. While an economist would argue this is a good thing, it may kill the news business. Newspapers earn their credibility with their markets by the breadth, depth and independence of their coverage. If the easy micropayment dollars all accrue to the trash stories, then quality journalism will be quickly eliminated or relegated to backwaters.

Micropayments will provide newspaper managers with instant financial feedback on the profitability of stories, genres, beats and individual journalists. Journalist will quickly learn to write for salability. Tech Dirt has an interesting perspective on this in Wait… Wouldn’t Micropayments Be Bad For Journalism?

Third, readers may need to set up multiple accounts with multiple publishers. It may be helpful if there was an iTunes style clearing house for online news, but I can’t see a realistic way this could be made to work.

Lastly, the whole idea of charging readers to access news adds considerable friction to the process. Stories behind pay content walls become invisible to search engines. The mere process of a reader stopping and thinking ‘do I have enough credit?’ or ‘is this worth paying for?’ will erode numbers. Regardless of their willingness to pay, the frictionless, free content sites will win the traffic everyday.

What do you think?

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