Why Charging For Online News Content Won’t Work
by Jaffer Ali
It happens every time a new type of media emerges. For
example, and this dates me a bit, when I entered the home
video business, beta was king! Back then, music industry
executives-turned video executives treated the video
industry as if it were the record industry.
Book distributors also jumped in, and, guess what? Yep,
they treated video like books.
Periodical distributors entered the fray and, well, you
know what happened…
It is undoubtedly true that we view life through the lens
of our own experiences. There is nothing wrong when these
experiences inform our viewpoints. But it is another
matter entirely when we become slaves to our own narrow
perspectives.
Steve Brill, creator of cable’s Court TV, is a slave to
his past and thus he is touting a model that has very
little chance to work online. Online is not cable. People
will not pay for information that is readily available
for free.
Online distribution platforms like Twitter, Facebook,
Hotmail, Gmail, etc. have made the physical distribution
of information either free or very close to free. Yes,
someone still needs to create that information. But when
it comes to news, this information is ubiquitous and free,
if you know where to look.
Give me open access and 140 characters to play with and I
will give you the Internet—Absolutely FREE!
Mr. Brill wants to superimpose a cable TV model onto the
online space. He is being led by his arrogance that makes
him believe that certain mainstream media outlets actually
have enough trust equity to pull off a paid model. But
chew on this for a moment:
1. The Bush Whitehouse brought in 150 retired Generals and
briefed them on the Iraq war to become analysts for all
MSM outlets. The MSM dutifully reported what these Generals
had to say.
2. Armstrong Williams was paid $250,000 by the Bush
administration to appear almost nightly on cable to
promote a POV.
3. The PR budget to sell the Iraq war for the Bush Admin
was $1.6 Billion
4. Carl Bernstein reported years ago that over 400
journalists in the US were on the CIA payroll
5. Judith Miller of the NY Times was essentially exiled
after being the Pentagon “go to” gal for promoting WMDs
in Iraq
This is not an anti-Republican diatribe, but an anti-MSM,
anti-foolishness diatribe. Only an arrogant cuss like
Brill would think that the editorial prowess of the MSM
news organizations is so profound that people will pay
for the privilege of being hoodwinked.
With the Internet, any and all of what we ultimately deem
important and “newsworthy” is revealed in due course, the
operative word being “we”. And it’s free! Bloggers on the
ground in Iraq tell a better story than embedded hacks.
And with Twitter and Facebook, one has the potential to
build large audiences and share information across the
globe in a matter of seconds.
News is reported, not created. Propaganda is created. With
free news outlets in Iran, China, Russia, Israel, Lebanon,
etc., the challenge is not finding the news. The challenge
– and the opportunity it represents – is in the distilling
of the vast amounts of free information and opinion at our
fingertips. The real stars of tomorrow’s news industry
will be those whose editorial taste we admire and whose
viewpoint we share.
Brill’s dream of charging for his version of the news has
the feel of fantasy, soon to become a nightmare.
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End of MEDIA PERSPECTIVES
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