One of my favorite praxis on days I didn’t have to work was to walk down to Mokabe’s and get coffee and read the paper. Now, I was quite poor at the time, and so I would scrounge my apartment for quarters: $1.25 for coffee, $.50 for refills, $1.25 for the Times (unless there was one already lying around). I’d exhaust the excess of a roll of quarters after the laundry was done; I was a really cheap me-date. I’d read the paper; I’d bring a notebook; I’d have a good book in tow, too.
That was before my laptop. I didn’t even have internet at home. If I couldn’t find a loose paper I’d buy one, because I was hungry for current events. I wrote letters to the editor. I wrote to my favorite columnists. I was pretty awesome.
So, here I am several years later. I have a laptop and internet access and the New York Times offers free online content and gets mad ad revenue. And now the Times is unhappy with our current relationship and wants to make some changes. They want to charge for content.
And I’m okay with that. I’ve been with them through the paid Times and the free. They have superior content and are a feeding trough for bloggers, podcasters and tweeters who are all surreptitiously making, if not revenue, then at least news on sites that take readers away from the Times. Some may drive their readers back to the Times with links, sure, and that’s good etiquette. But the Times, like any good drug kingpin, doesn’t want its small time dealers getting rich off their risk, prowess and reputation.
Already, their decision to charge has been called a nail in the coffin of print journalism, as if social media will set upon and devour this frail, defunct machine. Others see it as an affront: all stuff on the internet should be free.
It will be interesting to watch this saga go down, certainly, but this move could just as easily prompt more and more dedicated news organizations to charge for content: a disinfectant against bloggers who snipe content and present it with gusto to their ten readers (ooh, hits close to home). I think then you’d see news bloggers making a decision: should I a) pay for content and sell my own ads or content b) become an actual news gatherer and get out in the world to talk to people, or c) blog about cats. That juncture could make the internet a more useful place. Or we might have a spike in cat blogs.
As to the folk who say content on the internet should be free, I heartily disagree. Content from your government should be free. Everything else is a product, created by a person, and the reason we produce it is to make cash. Sure, a drug dealer will give you some for free: it builds trust, you sample the product, and you get addicted. But after a certain point, no matter how much the drug dealer loves his job of getting people high, he has to has to has to make some money doing it.
Some of my willingness to pay stems from a desire to see the Times continue to operate. It’s the same reason I tip well at my favorite restaurants. Its existence is important enough to me that I would pay a bit to ensure my access to good food, great service, expert content that is researched, vetted, critiqued and edited.
I will pay for online access to the New York Times, because I love their storytelling, I love their video, I don’t think it’s like anything else. I think they’ve adapted in a very classy way to new media, video, audio. I expect to pay for analysis, which is why I am willing to pay for the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Miller McCune, and now the New York Times.
I wanted it enough to dig through my backpack for quarters, and so do you.
I am dedicated to learning and making. I love to teach myself new things, so you'll see my early and hopefully improving design work, artwork and great ideas I've stumbled upon. I write, and will give you as much as I can critically or creatively. I'm also intent on building up collaborative greatness with anyone who sees an opportunity to invent, interpret or interject.
A couple of clarifying/detailed points on this. First, and simply, do you mean all content from the government should be free because the citizens have paid taxes which cover the cost of the content? Second, your reason for people to generate content is not universally true. On the internet especially (or at least more visibly than in other forms), content is made for a wide variety of purposes, frequently not being for profit. A great deal of sites are supported by cash from ad revenue, but there is so much content generated for free by members of the human race! Even if Geocities puts an ad on your personal webpage in exchange for hosting, the content itself is still free and not created to make money. People sharing photos, communication, ideas… those are usually informal and free. Consider your blog, even! No profit/cash there. There is still some truth lurking in this statement, if it can be teased out.
That said, I am also a fan of supporting newspapers and their worthwhile and useful and (otherwise non-existent) reporting. On a similar (but for other reasons) note, I am a subscriber of my local paper, and not only enjoy a printed copy every morning with my cereal, but also have an online subscription to access local news and happenings.
Too true, Steven, I will clarify.
Government content: “should” is an awfully nasty word. I think that content created by our government is obliged be free because it concerns a very fundamental ability to participate in, understand and monitor the people and organs that make decisions on our behalf. That we have paid taxes seems a secondary reason: maybe paying taxes is why it can be free, not why it should.
As far as bloggy content, I will restrict my above comments to “news” blogs, or even more narrowly, the blogs that do what I have accused them of doing (making money off of others’ free creation).
Certainly there is a fantastic wealth of people who offer sometimes very valuable information (I’m thinking tutorials especially) for free. I think that is precisely what makes it so difficult to charge for content. It often seems free to put things online, but even I pay for hosting and my domain name (which I was very glad to get:). There are options for free content hosting and sharing everywhere, but I operate at a loss because I do not wish to host ads. And I can avoid ads because I pay for hosting. I am often amazed, though, by the quality of free content that exists, that exists because someone thought: other people might benefit from this! Other people should know this! I do hope that’s a quality that perseveres.