Robert Andrews, the UK editor of Paid Content came to talk to us last week. I was really interested to hear what he had to say particularly with the massive debate going on at the moment with whether or not we should pay for content online thanks to Rupert Murdoch.
We will soon be paying for news online
Paid Content was set up in to 2002 by Rafat Ali who started the site because he believed all media would eventually become digital. The site acts as a breaking news site, aggregator and shows regularly updates news stories throughout the day as they progress. It was built on a blog framework which was updated through the day and Robert pointed out that they were increasingly using Twitter for news. Their Headquarters are in New York while Robert is one of two UK editors who work from home.
He was quick to point out that those starting a career in journalism need to be able to multi-task as that is the way journalism is headed. The growth of digital media in the last 10/15 years particularly fascinated him adding that newspapers and magazines were desperately trying to keep up with technology and expanding out to to reach more people. With the current economic climate, newspapers are making a third less than they were this time last year and with online advertising considered the most efficient form of advertising, magazines and newspapers are losing money. They’ve started to question whether or not the advertising market will turn up and if it’s not likely to do so, then they need to use short term solutions to satisfy their shareholders.
This short term solution could be a pay wall. Business titles like the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal would possibly be very successful using pay walls as their readers are generally wealthy.
© paidcontent.org
But the real question is can the same be said for consumer news? Ft.com has 1.6 million users with 128,000 paying £90 a year. However, KPMG found out that 60% of people would rather see ads than pay for content ad free. Hitwise found that free content sites traffic has been increasing while transitional websites traffic has been decreasing and Lightspeed’s survey revealed that 9/10 people wouldn’t pay for content. In another poll people were asked what would they do if their favourite news site started to charge. The results weren’t all that surprising to me. 74% said they would find another site, which is probably what I would do. 8% said they would use its free headlines only while only 5% said they would continue reading it. Yet another survey found that 72% of people would want to pay less than £10 a year to read content online with nobody willing to pay over £50. All the poll results can be found here.
Will people be willing to pay for national newspapers? If not why would they be likely to pay for local news? Hyper local reporting was extremely popular between 2002-2006 although the only real success was the Trinity Mirror’s Teeside Gazette. A second wave is starting again with Robert emphasising that this was an exciting time for any one prepared to multi-task as the future of journalism is specialisation.
