{"id":303,"date":"2005-03-16T02:52:13","date_gmt":"2005-03-16T02:52:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/303"},"modified":"2005-03-16T02:52:13","modified_gmt":"2005-03-16T02:52:13","slug":"pay-for-the-news-get-the-fishwrap-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/303","title":{"rendered":"Pay for the news, get the fishwrap for free?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brad Plumer (guest-blogging at Political Animal<\/a) has a nice point<\/a> with regard to the possibility that the New York Times<\/em> might go subscriber-only<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“But suppose the move is inevitable. Betsy Newmark thinks<\/a> subscriber fees would ‘put a crimp in political blogging.’ Perhaps. But then again, perhaps this could all work out in a way that actually improve political blogging. What if the daily news was subscriber-only, but all the news archives were free and open to internet users everywhere? Blogging, it seems, could certainly benefit from slowing things down a bit and doing more commenting on week-old or month-old political stories. And sure, a few big bloggers and institutions would no doubt still buy subscriptions and do ‘insta-updates’ with off-the-cuff commentary, but the rest of us would have to do a bit more thoughtful analysis\/research\/reporting and a bit less hyperactive mouse-clicking and ‘breaking’ updates. That sounds fine to me!”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I rather like this idea, in part because I’m more a “better a day late than a dollar short” than a “shoot from the hip” kind of thinker. An interesting question is what timescale would be most appropriate \u2014 I’m thinking the times could gain by a much shorter premium-content model. If today’s newspaper really is tomorrow’s fishwrap, perhaps the <\/em>Times<\/em> would do best by offering the current day’s news news via subscription, micropayment or “watch this longer ad” payment and giving the rest away for “free.” Bloggers would be more likely to link to articles because they’d know they would still be around in two weeks, people might read a lot more of the history behind a current news event because the old news is more available, and the Times<\/em> would get both advertising revenue and a great plug for their premium service by adding sidebar forward-links to today’s headlines related to the story being read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brad Plumer (guest-blogging at Political Animal<\/a) has a nice point<\/a> with regard to the possibility that the New York Times<\/em> might go subscriber-only<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“But suppose the move is inevitable. Betsy Newmark thinks<\/a> subscriber fees would ‘put a crimp in political blogging.’ Perhaps. But then again, perhaps this could all work out in a way that actually improve political blogging. What if the daily news was subscriber-only, but all the news archives were free and open to internet users everywhere? Blogging, it seems, could certainly benefit from slowing things down a bit and doing more commenting on week-old or month-old political stories. And sure, a few big bloggers and institutions would no doubt still buy subscriptions and do ‘insta-updates’ with off-the-cuff commentary, but the rest of us would have to do a bit more thoughtful analysis\/research\/reporting and a bit less hyperactive mouse-clicking and ‘breaking’ updates. That sounds fine to me!”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I rather like this idea, in part because I’m more a “better a day late than a dollar short” than a “shoot from the hip” kind of thinker. An interesting question is what timescale would be most appropriate \u2014 I’m thinking the times could gain by a much shorter premium-content model. If today’s newspaper really is tomorrow’s fishwrap, perhaps the <\/em>Times<\/em> would do best by offering the current day’s news news via subscription, micropayment or “watch this longer ad” payment and giving the rest away for “free.” Bloggers would be more likely to link to articles because they’d know they would still be around in two weeks, people might read a lot more of the history behind a current news event because the old news is more available, and the Times<\/em> would get both advertising revenue and a great plug for their premium service by adding sidebar forward-links to today’s headlines related to the story being read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}