The title of this post doesn’t make a lot of sense until you read an interesting post by Lucas Grindley, the online managing editor for NationalJournal.com. Grindley’s responding to the revived idea of charging for news content online, an idea that’s stuck in the craw of many “information wants to be free” advocates.
Grindley’s argument makes a ton of sense. He says that some articles should be free and others should be behind a paywall, available only to subscribers. OK, when I put it like that it sounds a little less like sense and more like “common sense,” as in the kind that’s not worth reading about, but bear with me.
Most commodity-based thinkers would probably put the popular stuff behind a paywall, right? After all, if the people want it, they should pay for it — through the nose if possible. But Grindley’s arguing the opposite. If it looks like it’s going to be popular, let ‘em have it. Put it on the Web for free.
Why? Grindley points out that popular articles attract a lot of eyeballs, which means a lot of banner ad impressions. As a result, popular articles make more money from ads than they would from subscription rates. Grindley’s approach looks at the article itself as a commodity and tries to find the best place for it to make as much money as it can.
What about the peas? Grindley mentions another kind of article, which he calls the “eat your peas” kind of article. This is the article that details the happenings of a city commission meeting or other bland and generally uninteresting happening. These sorts of things need to be covered by newspapers, but they aren’t going to be read by a lot of people — just the people with a strong interest in the “peas” articles. Therefore, these articles will make more money from subscriptions than they will from ad impressions.
Grindley writes:
...subscription based content must be highly desirable. My point is that subscription content serves niche audiences, not large audiences. The members of the niche are willing to pay. And if you pick the right niche, then they’re willing to pay a lot.
Voila! A model that could work, provided that editors have a crystal ball to predict the popularity of an article before it’s put online. I kid. Most editors and reporters would have their ears to the ground and know how popular an article probably would be among the readers, but this sort of system would require a strong business sense among at least one person in the newsroom.
The journalists I know don’t have a lot of business sense, but I predict that will be changing soon among all reporters and editors.
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Set the good stuff free and charge for the peas
The title of this post doesn’t make a lot of sense until you read an interesting post by Lucas Grindley, the online managing editor for NationalJournal.com. Grindley’s responding to the revived idea of charging for news content online, an idea that’s stuck in the craw of many “information wants to be free” advocates.
Grindley’s argument makes a ton of sense. He says that some articles should be free and others should be behind a paywall, available only to subscribers. OK, when I put it like that it sounds a little less like sense and more like “common sense,” as in the kind that’s not worth reading about, but bear with me.
Most commodity-based thinkers would probably put the popular stuff behind a paywall, right? After all, if the people want it, they should pay for it — through the nose if possible. But Grindley’s arguing the opposite. If it looks like it’s going to be popular, let ‘em have it. Put it on the Web for free.
Why? Grindley points out that popular articles attract a lot of eyeballs, which means a lot of banner ad impressions. As a result, popular articles make more money from ads than they would from subscription rates. Grindley’s approach looks at the article itself as a commodity and tries to find the best place for it to make as much money as it can.
What about the peas? Grindley mentions another kind of article, which he calls the “eat your peas” kind of article. This is the article that details the happenings of a city commission meeting or other bland and generally uninteresting happening. These sorts of things need to be covered by newspapers, but they aren’t going to be read by a lot of people — just the people with a strong interest in the “peas” articles. Therefore, these articles will make more money from subscriptions than they will from ad impressions.
Grindley writes:
Voila! A model that could work, provided that editors have a crystal ball to predict the popularity of an article before it’s put online. I kid. Most editors and reporters would have their ears to the ground and know how popular an article probably would be among the readers, but this sort of system would require a strong business sense among at least one person in the newsroom.
The journalists I know don’t have a lot of business sense, but I predict that will be changing soon among all reporters and editors.