Comments on: Can Apple Save the Publishing Industry?

By: Matthew Gertner

Matthew Gertner — Wed, 20 May 2009 07:13:50 +0000

I keep meaning to package and post my version of the extension. I’ll post a new entry on this blog when/if I do so.

By: Steven

Steven — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:10:37 +0000

How did you hack the instabutton extension so that you could use it in the context menu?

By: What’s really being sold? « Not Free Content

What’s really being sold? « Not Free Content — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:07:13 +0000

[...] NYTimes might make micropayments work are interesting, but I think an idea worth condering is this insight from Matthew Gertner after ditching his Economist subscription in favor of InstaPaper, which makes any web clipping he [...]

By: Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 22:15:14 +0000

This actually is an interesting trend, but I think closed-wall gardens like iTunes are not really the solution to an open world.
Models like the one from LWN.net sound pretty interesting to me though, and they seem to work for them pretty well: Primary content (i.e. the longer articles and the weekly summaries, not the the few-line pointer to press releases or something reported by other sources) is subscriber-only for a week and becomes completely free afterwards – and subscribers can generate links to still-hidden content to hand to their friends so those can get access for single articles (but those can be shut down in the case of misuse). People who really like that content are willing to subscribe to get it when it’s hot, and as “nothing is as old as the daily news from yesterday” (old print media saying), the old content is free and searchable, so people see how good the quality of the medium is.

By: Matthew Gertner

Matthew Gertner — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:09:32 +0000

Andreas,

Well it’s a darn sight better than throwing a fist at me and giving me a tomato bump.

I’d gladly pay for the Economist, but not if I am paying for extra paper and inconvenience. Anyway, I’m sure my blog post made it amply clear that I, for one, think we’ll be paying for quality online content soon enough.

By: Breaking news: broken news « The Hannibal Blog

Breaking news: broken news « The Hannibal Blog — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:56:34 +0000

[...] Matthew Gertner (rebutting Clay, and starting with a blood-curdling anecdote about how and why he has just dropped his subscription to …. The Economist!) [...]

By: Andreas

Andreas — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:35:17 +0000

Matthew, as a writer for The Economist AND blogger AND swamped information worker hoping to become more productive, I want to a) throw a tomato at you and b) give you a fist bump.

The tomato is easily ducked: I feel obliged to throw it because you dropped our subscription.

The fist bump is for what sounds like a fantastic tip to make myself a more efficient reader, via Instapaper.

Also:
a) Thank You to all of you commenters for using The Economist as THE self-evident example for “well-written”.
b) Just know that we who are in this particular sausage factory are not the slightest bit glib about this and do not take your verdict for granted….

By: Matthew Gertner

Matthew Gertner — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:38:02 +0000

It’s an interesting read, but it suffers from the same weaknesses as all the other arguments that cite failed experiments in the past as evidence that payments for online articles will never work.

Nick Carr has posted an excellent counterpoint explaining why this logic doesn’t hold up: http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2009/02/misreading_news.php. Of course, in a world where virtually everyone is free, the few guys who decide to go behind the paywall are going to face a massive reader exodus. But this can’t go on forever, a point that is made increasingly clear by the very woes of the publishing industry that have brought this debate once again to the fore.

It’s basically a variation of the Tragedy of the Commons. As long as the vast majority publications are available for free online, it’s very hard not to be. Commercial imperatives will eventually kick in, however, at which point the systems that failed in the past will have a much better chance of succeeding.

By: Steve Safran

Steve Safran — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:11:38 +0000

Matthew – a thoughtful piece (and more history with numbers) is at the Nieman Lab site.

Don’t know if your spam filter catches posts with URLs, so I’ve put it in the Website field of this entry. Click on my name to go there. Or take out the obvious junk below:

niemanlab (dot ) org/2009/02/will-paid-content-work-two-cautionary-tales-from-2004/

By: Matthew Gertner

Matthew Gertner — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:03:03 +0000

Well the big question is whether they will be able to finance their operations just from selling “attention”. Some online publication will, because mostly they just reprint news from the big players (”The Wall Street Journal is reporting…”). But personally I don’t believe that this will be enough to pay for real journalism.

I’ve been thinking about this some more in light of all the discussion in the past couple of days. There are a few different use cases, and they probably require different business models. When I go to Techmeme and pull up some interesting looking articles in the morning, I’m certainly not going to want to be “nickled-and-dimed” into paying a fee for each one. There needs to be a way for me to get a blanket subscription to a wide range of sites, or most sites will need to get by on “attention”, a few premium offerings or whatever (probably some combination thereof).

But there are also use cases, like my reading of the Economist (and generally for high-quality, high-budget publications) where I think small payments for articles, with the possibility to buy a full issue or monthly/yearly subscription at a discount is the way to go. Say $.50/article, $1/issue, $5/month or $20/year. I’d go ahead and get a year of my favorite 3-4 publications in this model and buy an article from others now and then if the payment mechanism were seamless enough.