No doubt the general public will be a lot more inclined to pay or subscribe for news content from highly trusted and prestigious firms.You will not find any who are more highly thought of or respected than the BBC, and they may well now be the only “free” news provider left online (although in the words of Robert A Heinlein “TANSTAAFL”– see licence fee). Quality broadsheets and periodicals like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Times, Guardian, and Economist could all comfortably and very credibly charge for access to online content.As a classic example, can anyone seriously doubt that people would have been queuing up to hand over their money to enable them to get more details on the Telegraph’s huge scoop about our MP’s expenses, this was a great story from a well trusted source.
What is Quality?
Would you pay for sites that aren’t “quality”?In other words, even though this works well for the broadsheets, can you see it working quite so well for the tabloids like the News of the World and the Sun? Would you pay to see topless Page 3 girls or “exclusive” interviews with non-entity celebs? Again the answer is probably yes. Many people would do just that because after all, it depends on how you define “quality”.The tabloids like the Sun, are in my humble opinion very well written and produce high quality, entertaining stories and they know exactly who their audience are.
News is a Precious Commodity
So yes, charging for news is going to happen and yes it’s going to work. Partly because it’s Murdoch behind it and partly because it all makes sense and may well be the only route to survival open to hard pressed newspapers. After all, we’re willing to pay a cover charge for a paper right now. That cover charge has always been ludicrously low in the UK (thanks to the Northcliffe philosophy) compared with the cover charge for equivalent quality European or US broadsheets.So if you think about it if you part with your cash for your daily news via a newspaper, the reality being that your already paying for it through the radio and TV via the licence fee we all pay, we are all more than happy to pay our fees for Sky to enable us to watch Premier League Football, why isn’t it feasible that we will pay for our news?
Organising the right Website Design company to take on your project is imperative. Nowadays any forward thinking company will also ensure that you arrange for SEO on your website, so choose wisely.
