Can newspapers make their online content pay?
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Posted on 8 Sep 2009 at 10:03
When Rupert Murdoch recently claimed his newspaper empire would have to start charging for online content, commentators were left wondering not only if people would be willing to pay, but how?
The media mogul's comments have refocused attention on the oft-touted concept of micropayments - bite-sized payments for drip-fed content - as media owners scramble to boost revenue. Micropayments were also mooted in the Government's Digital Britain report, with influential production company Fremantle Media calling for a central system for co-ordinating payments.
With micropayments, newspapers, bloggers, bands or recipe writers could charge as little as a penny upwards for their wares. It's seen as a viable alternative to monthly or annual subscriptions, which are normally only valid on one site and limit surfers' freedom to explore.
But the internet is littered with failed micropayment schemes. From Beenz to CyberCash, and Bitpass to Peppercoin, everyone recognises the need for a simple penny-sized payment system, but no-one has made it work.
There have been a lot of micropayment systems and they have all failed because they worked on too few sites and were too complex... what people want is a single payment system that works on thousands of sites
"There have been a lot of micropayment systems and they have all failed because they worked on too few sites and were too complex," said Alex Wilhelm, founder of micropayment start-up Contenture. "Users had to sign up and go through a whole rigmarole, often for each site and system. What people want is a single payment system that works on thousands of sites."
The problem is exacerbated by a land grab that's spawned so many competing schemes that consumers don't know where to turn. "Micropayment systems need critical mass to be any use to merchants, but the whole market is really fragmented because people are scrabbling to launch their own systems," said Mike Beattie, CEO of SMS-based payments company Sepomo. "There's no ubiquitous system."
Even if they have scale, micropayment schemes still struggle to take small enough payments - consumers simply cannot pay only a few pennies to read an article if the payment process costs more. Take PayPal's micropayment scheme, which charges a flat fee of 5p plus 5% of the transaction. It sounds cheap, but as Time's editor Walter Isaacson stated last month, "PayPal's transaction costs are too high for impulse buys of less than a dollar."
Depends on the "news"
I don't buy a paper because they have gone from reporting events to telling stories, which is major distinction.
I can see the case for paying for news, in the same way you'd buy a newspaper.
Do I want to subscribe to a single news provider? I'm not sure.
I read the PC Pro RSS feed but stopped reading the printed magazine years ago, because it was (a) out of date and (b) half adverts.
If I only want to read, and therefore only download,
By cheysuli on 8 Sep 2009 
Answer NO.
I stopped buying PC Pro when I switched to Mac user and macs. Though the content is still worth it for me.
Online newspapers are going to struggle because someone will give it away for free and not just the BBC. The fact that the BBC does have a good online news service means that I do not need a newspaper. I will still get one if they have good content such as the telegraph did this summer with MP's expenses.
Though does the Sun actually have any content worthy of paying for, bar page 3 which will be available elsewhere anyway?
I have found that I look at the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph pages more because I can skim through the headlines with an RSS feed and then go to the site directly. Then the papers gain from my visiting the site and being able to count that towards their unique users count for advertisers.
By Amnesia10 on 8 Sep 2009
Can't pay? Won't pay!
I don't buy any of Murdoch's rags on general principle, so I'm certainly not going to pay for any online content.
There's plenty of other places to get news, unless Bilderberger Murdoch puts pressure on our spineless politicians to ban them.
By Lacrobat on 8 Sep 2009
Can't pay? Won't pay!
I don't buy any of Murdoch's rags on general principle, so I'm certainly not going to pay for any online content.
There's plenty of other places to get news, unless Bilderberger Murdoch puts pressure on our spineless politicians to ban them.
By Lacrobat on 8 Sep 2009
I'll continue to get my news somewhere else - the BBC is one of the most reliable sources and I can't see that becoming a pay site seeing as we already pay for it. To be honest we can probably manage with one less news source anyway and the only thing I'll miss is Clarkson's columns in the Sunday Times.
Cheysuli makes a valid point that newspapers now tell stories rather than report events. With the advent of internet and rolling news services, this is surely inevitable - what's the point of reporting yesterday's news that most people will have known about yesterday?
By halsteadk on 8 Sep 2009
Yes, the BBC appears to be the elephant in the room when it comes down to charging for content - why pay for it when you get it for free?
Maybe that's why James Murdoch has been attacking it recently? Anyway, I can't see paying for content will ever take off, while you can get the same news for free elsewhere.
As for newspapers, there's still something nice about reading the Sunday newspapers in bed, but an RSS reader (as Amnesia10 noted) is a lot more efficient way of taking in the daily news.
By pbryanw on 8 Sep 2009
leave the BBC alone
An editor of the Wall Street Journal as far back as the 1940s identified the problem. People can get news from all sorts of sources, so what newspapers should be doing is, in a nutshell, 'telling people what's going to happen next'. This is not exactly analysis, but neither is a plain-vanilla reporting. And as WSJ.com have found, people are willing to pay for this sort of content.
Charging for news has never really paid anyway, and newspapers historically have been heavily subsidised by classfied advertising. I would be very surprised if anyone is actually talking about doing that, more on the lines of getting people to subscribe to the crossword and stuff like that.
As for the BBC they are just a service based on a subscription model, albeit one with a captive audience. They have been very successful. We should be very wary of self-serving attacks on the BBC from the likes of Jason Murdoch, as he doesn't seem to believe in independent journalism himself.
By c6ten on 8 Sep 2009
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