The debate over free vs. paid online newspapers has popped again, as it seems to every six months or so. There are interesting ruminations from Howard Owens, Joe Wikert, Len Witt and others.
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it, too, and it turns out I have a lot to say about the whole thing. So much so that instead of unloading it in one long post, I’m going to spread it out over two or three, starting with this one.
The basic idea I have is that the logic that says newspapers made a mistake when they first jumped on to the web and gave their stuff away is flawed and ignores the reality of the net. Regardless of what they had done, I suspect, free would have emerged as the underlying reality of web-based journalism. And if that logic is flawed, the idea that the genie can be put back in the bottle and widespread subscriptions services can emerge is flawed, too.
Before I plunge into why I think that, I want to get a central irony out of the way. Newspaper publishers who argue that they need their readers to pay for the value they receive have benefited tremendously from value they didn’t and don’t pay for.
Think about it: the internet was built on a highly-subsidized set of connections. The basis of the information beast — the world wide web — was made possible when Tim Berners-Lee developed it and then gave it away. Some newspapers make use of YouTube (free) to host and spread videos. Some build their web sites on Drupal (free). Some use applications such as ffmpegX to encode Flash video (free). Some reporters blog from wordpress.com or blogspot (both free). Those are off the top of my head: I’m sure there are more.
I’m not suggesting there are no costs to journalism, or that there’s anything wrong in using freely available tools to help deliver better journalism. I’m only pointing out that some newspapers who argue that folks should be paying for value, have no trouble taking value without paying for it when they can. And it is only ironic: the incredibly rich set of applications and services that are freely available is not an internet bug. It’s a feature.
And freely available information, as I’ll attempt to tease out a little more in Part II, is not a bug of the ‘net, either, but perhaps its central feature.
TAGS: NEWSPAPERS, PAID, WORLD WIDE WEB
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[...] paid vs. free debate over newspapers flares up every now and then but, as I wrote in Part 1 of this post a couple of days ago: The basic idea I have is that the logic that says newspapers made a mistake [...]