Tackling the paywall debate for community newspapers
Someone asked last week for a summary of online articles about the pros and cons of paywalls. Nothing is more relevant right now in Texas community journalism: Are our newspapers going to charge for access to their websites, or should they remain free in hopes that they will generate additional advertising revenue? There is no easy answer to this.
We know that the ethos of the Internet is that information should be free. And since Al Gore invented the Internet, that's been the prevailing practice. Some news sites have implemented paywalls. Others have gone from free to paid and back to free. And there are many options in between those polar opposites.
The paywall concept seems to be working in a few places, and especially among some of what we call "niche" sites - websites that offer specialized information for limited audiences. Even such a well-known paid site as The Wall Street Journal can be considered a niche site because of its focus on specialized business coverage.
You've heard publishers claim that the best way to establish value is to put a price on the information. The price we impose on the online product becomes the value of that product, they say. But in a supply-and-demand economy, the seller does not establish value; the buyer does. Let's say you want to sell your old Yugo, and you want it to be seen as a sought-after and valued purchase. So you price it at $50,000.
Good luck. If there's such a thing as a Yugo collector, you may well get it. But if someone is just looking for a car, there are too many options out there.
So if we expect consumers to pay for the online product, we have to offer something the consumer perceives as value (as opposed to something we think is valuable) and something that the consumer cannot obtain elsewhere. (In the paywall literature, that's typically called "premium content.")
And remember that "elsewhere" may not just be another newspaper or a news medium - it can be other online sites, blogs, and especially social networking. The most recent Pew study reported that 35 percent of respondents had a favorite news Web site, but of that number only 5 percent said they would be willing to pay if their "favorite site" erected a paywall.
Sounds like a blanket condemnation of paywalls, but that's not what I intended. Instead, the point is just that the whole paywall issue is more complex than it seems.
So as you consider this issue, and your own decision about whether or not to put up a paywall, here are some considerations. The following five articles are examinations (all written in readable style) of the paywall issue. There give options and they bring up perspectives you need to consider.
Whatever you do, do this first — make a pot of coffee and lock yourself in your office and read through these articles. You may still choose the paywall route, but you can say you've looked at some of the important options. Here they are:
- Fees for online news yet to succeed: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world_business/view/1071443/1/.html
- Five ways to monetize the future of the news media: http://mediachannel.org/blog/2010/05/5-ways-to-monetize-the-future-of-news-media/
- Pitfalls of the paywall: http://mediachannel.org/blog/2010/05/5-ways-to-monetize-the-future-of-news-media/
- Newspapers experiment with charging for premium content: http://digital.community-journalism.net/blogs/whatsnew/newspapers-experiment-charging-premium-c
- On newspapers and paywalls: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-mcquaid/on-newspapers-and-paywall_b_211508.html
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Bio
Tommy Thomason, the founding director of the TCU Schieffer School of Journalism, has left that position to become the founding director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. Thomason began his career in journalism in the early 1970s with the Associated Press, working as a sportswriter in Arkadelphia and Little Rock, Ark. He has also worked in public relations in Dallas and as a copyeditor for several regional magazines.
Dr. Thomason has taught journalism at five universities and has been at TCU since 1984. In 1987, he was one of the winners of a national Teaching Award in Journalism Ethics from the Poynter Institute of Media Studies in St. Petersburg, Fla.
He has been one of the nation's most active researchers on the media's treatment of crime victims. His research has been presented at both regional and national symposia and has cited in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Presstime and the Columbia Journalism Review.
Dr. Thomason was co-director of the first national symposium on crime victims and the news media, which was televised nationally on C-SPAN, and a symposium on coverage of sex crimes, Sex in the Media: The Public's Right to Know vs. the Victim's Right to Privacy.
He maintains an interest in writing at all academic levels, and frequently speaks to elementary school teachers about writing workshops for children. He is the author of More than a Writing Teacher: How to Become a Teacher Who Writes, Writer to Writer: How to Conference Young Authors, Write On Target: How to Prepare Young Writers for Success on Writing Achievement Tests, Absolutely Write: Teaching the Craft Elements of Writing and Writeaerobics: 40 Exercises to Improve Your Writing Teaching. A new book, Tools, not Rules: Teaching Grammar in the Writing Classroom, is scheduled for publication in 2009.
He is listed in Who's Who in the South and Southwest, Who's Who in American Education, Men of Achievement, Who's Who in the World and Dictionary of International Biography.
