There is something deeply unsatisfying in sitting down to write a commentary about why newspapers can’t charge for online content.
It’s not that what I have to say is unoriginal, though it is. The Internet, after all, is awash in arguments as to why the disintegrating newspaper business must stop giving away its content and, conversely, why it can’t.
More than that, though, I fear that in pointing out the obvious, I’m only convincing myself there’s no future for the metropolitan newspaper as we’ve come to know it, either in print or online. That great industrial-age amalgamation of international, national and local news, sports, comics, concert reviews, obituaries, crossword puzzle and advertisements is finally giving way to something else.
After several years of trying to make a go of free access supported by advertising, news organizations are once again poised to try charging for online content. Writing in the American Journalism Review, newspaper consultant John Morton practically demands it. “I call on all you publishers to decide individually (to ward off the antitrust folks) to charge for Internet access to your newspaper content,” he says.
And Steven Brill, the entrepreneurial journalist behind such projects as the American Lawyer, Court TV and Contentville — the last an early failure in the paid-content wars — has unveiled something called Journalism Online. The idea is that users will be able to choose from a variety of plans — paid subscriptions, per-article micropayments or some combination — to access news sites that are currently available for free.
Now, I have no philosophical objection to the idea that news organizations ought to be able to charge for their online content. The problem is that it’s highly unlikely to work — mainly because there are too many sources of free, high-quality news with which they’re competing.
For example, let’s consider what would happen if the five national American newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times — were to begin charging for content.
First, consider that the two leading news websites are affiliated not with newspapers but, rather, with cable news channels. MSNBC.com, with just a shade under 40 million unique visitors in March, according to Nielsen Online, and CNN.com, with nearly 39 million, are about twice as popular as NYTimes.com, by far the most successful newspaper site, with nearly 20.1 million. Neither MSNBC.com nor CNN.com is going to start charging anytime soon, as both serve to promote their television cousins.
And though CNN.com and MSNBC.com lack the depth of a great newspaper, there are plenty of other online alternatives that are not only free, but that are almost certain to remain free, including the websites of nonprofit news organizations both large (National Public Radio) and small (the Christian Science Monitor), as well as non-American options such as BBC News and, yes, the Guardian.
There is an additional problem with newspapers’ charging for online access: newspapers have never asked their readers to pay for content. As Michael Kinsley pointed out earlier this year, the money you plunk down for your daily paper barely covers the cost of paper, printing, ink and distribution. Given that context, it hardly seems fair to charge customers who’ve already paid for their own press (their computers or iPhones) and distribution (Internet access).
So what is to be done? Probably the best we can hope for is to help newspapers shrink slowly into a new role as specialty news sources. A democratic society needs the sort of public-interest journalism and investigative reporting that have traditionally been provided almost solely by newspapers, and it’s that kind of journalism that most needs saving.
