Leading news publishers met in Chicago last week to hear the business models of the future -- the paths they should take back to profitability. Some of the proceedings have been reported by the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard. The problem is that most of what they heard is the same old tired models with new, Web 3.o-sounding names, like Journalism Online, Fair Syndication Consortium, Kachingle, and ViewPass. They all miss the mark by a huge margin. They are all seriously flawed and don't stand a prayer's chance in hell of working for most news publishers.
These models appeal to news publishers on some level because they all tout the old ways of making money: pay walls, subscriptions, user registration, demographic profiling, ad targeting, and, somewhat new, extorting money out of those who have figured out how to make it (namely Google). These are old models for a new paradigm in publishing, rather than a new model for a new paradigm in publishing. In all but a few cases, users are not going to pay to view online news content, period. They are not going to register. They are not going to allow themselves to be tracked and profiled and "behaviorally targeted" with advertisements. There are all kinds of reasons why these models won't work, but allow me to highlight just a few:
1. Pay walls: why would people pay for content on Journalism Online or any publisher site when the same story (or a reasonably good version thereof) can be viewed for free on Google, Yahoo, MSN, CNN, Moreover, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, and hundreds of other aggregator websites? Are publishers going to stop selling their feeds to these aggregators? I think not.
2. User Registration: I once had to register with NYT.com in order to read their stories (thankfully they did away with that). I registered as a 35 year-old female with two kids and an income of $85,000 per year, using an anonymous email address from Hotmail. I am still getting email offers for Vogue Magazine at that email address, which I keep just for these lame registration sites. There is no system that can verify that the data entered by users is remotely accurate, and if there was, few would register.
3. Demographic Profiling/Ad Targeting: Read #2. Need I say more? Okay, I'll say a little more. Like many users, I have my browser set to reject cookies. On the rare occasion that I accept a cookie in order to view a site or buy something online, the cookies are automatically deleted by another nifty utility that came with my PC. Additionally, some studies suggest that as much as 60% of the data collected by sites and sold to advertisers to justify ad rates is grossly inaccurate.
4. Making Google and the other Ad Networks Pay a "fair compensation" toll: ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Good luck with that. (By the way, there are ways that Google and the other search engines will pay publishers for the pages they index and cache, but this is not it. I'll save that nugget for another post).
There are LOTS more reasons why none of the models proposed thus far will work for most news publishers. The underlying reason is because people do not "view" the news like they use to, nor do they "consume" the news like they use to. So it follows that news publishers can not monetize like they use to. None of the old models apply, no matter how they are made to look like new models. I propose the only sensible model is "usage," for want of a better, cooler, Web 3.0-sounding term.
I suggest that the model for how content will be monetized on the web has been turned on its head. It's an upside down world of news publishing in the digital age. What do I mean by that? In the good ole days, most of the money was made by newspapers from subscription, or from CPM advertising. It was an all-or-none proposition. A little money was made on actual "usage," like when someone bought a reprint, a photo, or a permission. People paid for a newspaper whether they read all the articles or not. It was worth it to get the business section, or sports section, or whatever we were interested in. Occasionally, we would buy a poster of the front page, or a plaque version of a wedding announcement. Publishers made a little money on "uses." The reverse is now true.
Today, people don't want to buy a newspaper to get just the sports section. They can get JUST the sports stories they want by doing a search or visiting any number of free sites that publish sports news and only sports news. They subscribe to Google Alerts or Clip&Copy to get just the articles they want. They will "pay" for what they use, but not for the privilege of seeing a bunch of headlines and stories they won't read. In the old model, publishers got paid for everything. In the new model, publishers will get paid for what people use (or "consume," if you like that term better). With this model, a "view" is NOT a use. People won't pay to view a headline or a story, anymore than an iTunes user will pay to sample a song. Users will pay to "take" an article, just like an iTunes user will pay to "take" a song. And no, this is not a pay-per-view model either.
The usage model concedes that all news stories are free -- to look at. View them to your heart's content. News is a commodity. If a publisher wants you to pay before you can view a story, get a similar one from another source that is happy to supply it free-of-charge, free-of-registration, free of stupid Kachingle badges or ViewPasses. Odds are you will find that same story, or ones very similar, on lots of aggregator sites. Just Google it. However, the second you click to email, print, save, post, download, share, or otherwise "use" the story (and millions of people do this every day), Bingo! That's money in the bank for the publisher. The cash register rings when content is used and shared, not because of the mere fact that it has been published.
This news usage monetization model should not be a huge leap for publishers. In some respects it mirrors the evolution of the advertising model. In the old days, advertisers paid for placement on an all-or-nothing basis. They paid on a CPM basis, not really knowing how effective their ads were. The old adage was, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half." Google changed all that. Advertising became "actionable." Advertisers pay for click ads because they deliver better, more accountable results. The same is true for content. Publishers can make money from content that is "actionable."
Publishers have learned that they can make more money from click ads (actionable) then they can make from old fashion impression ads. In fact, advertisers won't pay them as much for old fashion impression ads as they will pay them for new-age click ads. The same is true for content. Users won't pay to view articles, but they will pay -- or advertisers will pay -- when users email, print, post, or otherwise "use" articles. In fact, publishers can make lots more money from usage than they can make from articles that are merely viewed. Unfortunately, they are still giving away uses and trying to make money on views. Page views have been reduced to remnant CPM ad rates. Publishers have things backward. They are trying to make money on views no one cares about, and they give away the uses that their audience values the most.
Old ad model -- CPM. (not actionable)
New ad model -- Pay-per-Click, Pay-per-Call and Pay-per-Sale. (actionable)
Old content model -- all or nothing subscription and pay-per-view. (not actionable)
New content model -- ad-supported usage and pay-per-usage. (actionable)
How publishers make money from advertising has forever changed. It's a new advertising paradigm. The same is true for how money is made from the content itself. It's an upside-down model. Some money in views (remnant advertising), lots of money in usage (targeted contextual advertising and paid usage). How the "usage" model works exactly and what publishers need to do to implement it, has been covered in other posts and white papers published on iCopyright.com. I won't belabor it here.
Long live the news and news publishers -- so long as the news is useful (not just viewable).
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Copyright is a Business Model
Lots more debate this week about what publishers (particularly newspapers) need to do to save themselves from oblivion. Here are some of the headlines from well respected sources:
Pay Walls Alone Won’t Save Newspapers
New York Times Considers Two Plans to Charge for Content on the Web
There We Go Again. No, Micropayments Won’t “Save Journalism”
Social Publishing Site Scribd Adds E-Commerce; 80 Percent Revenues To Publishers
What would Google do about newspapers?
News Corp Studies Web Content Platforms
The industry continues to look for a "magic" solution, when the "practical" solution is already on their content: their copyright notice (and by extension their article tools). They just haven't turned it on. The copyright notice is a cash register that goes wherever the content goes, without creating barriers to the free-flow of content. It can ring up sales of the content each time it is viewed, emailed, printed, posted, republished, or otherwise used or shared -- online or offline -- whether it is being used for free or for a fee. It also virtually eliminates piracy (unauthorized scraping, copying and posting).
Copyright is not sexy, but it is the best business model for content that has ever been created and will ever be created. It's the thing that both protects content and monetizes it. Publishers are using an old 20th century version of copyright -- an inert symbol that says nothing and does nothing. They just need to upgrade it. Make way for copyright 2.1 -- a version for the 21st century. Copyright is a cash register. Plug it in! Anyone that wants to use the content deposits a few cents or dollars, or gets it for free for other consideration, depending upon the price set by the owner (as with all goods and services.) Anyone who tries to take it without paying gets their fingers slammed in the cash register door.
More on copyright as a business model can be found in these two papers:
A Vision for Copyright in the 21st Century
iCopyright Article Tools: Maximizing Revenue, Minimizing Piracy
Pay Walls Alone Won’t Save Newspapers
New York Times Considers Two Plans to Charge for Content on the Web
There We Go Again. No, Micropayments Won’t “Save Journalism”
Social Publishing Site Scribd Adds E-Commerce; 80 Percent Revenues To Publishers
What would Google do about newspapers?
News Corp Studies Web Content Platforms
The industry continues to look for a "magic" solution, when the "practical" solution is already on their content: their copyright notice (and by extension their article tools). They just haven't turned it on. The copyright notice is a cash register that goes wherever the content goes, without creating barriers to the free-flow of content. It can ring up sales of the content each time it is viewed, emailed, printed, posted, republished, or otherwise used or shared -- online or offline -- whether it is being used for free or for a fee. It also virtually eliminates piracy (unauthorized scraping, copying and posting).
Copyright is not sexy, but it is the best business model for content that has ever been created and will ever be created. It's the thing that both protects content and monetizes it. Publishers are using an old 20th century version of copyright -- an inert symbol that says nothing and does nothing. They just need to upgrade it. Make way for copyright 2.1 -- a version for the 21st century. Copyright is a cash register. Plug it in! Anyone that wants to use the content deposits a few cents or dollars, or gets it for free for other consideration, depending upon the price set by the owner (as with all goods and services.) Anyone who tries to take it without paying gets their fingers slammed in the cash register door.
More on copyright as a business model can be found in these two papers:
A Vision for Copyright in the 21st Century
iCopyright Article Tools: Maximizing Revenue, Minimizing Piracy
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
A Vision for Copyright in the 21st Century
No matter where you stand on copyright, you probably agree that it’s a confusing and contentious issue. Few people understand copyright and even fewer agree on how strongly it should be applied or enforced in the digital age. This paper offers a clear and sensible vision for copyright in the 21st century. It proposes and demonstrates three features that should be incorporated into each and every work that is copyrighted: Inform, Enable, and Authenticate. These three features make copyright work for all stakeholders in the digital content ecosystem.
The purpose of this paper is to rally content creators, content distributors, and content consumers – along with the industry associations that represent them -- to embrace this vision and to help implement it. The time has come for a unified vision.
Please review the paper and weigh in with your comments.
The purpose of this paper is to rally content creators, content distributors, and content consumers – along with the industry associations that represent them -- to embrace this vision and to help implement it. The time has come for a unified vision.
Please review the paper and weigh in with your comments.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Associated Press Targets Internet Aggregators
Good story on NPR about AP's campaign to crack down on unauthorized uses of their content. Click on the "Listen Now" link to hear the interview with Jane Seagrave. She does an excellent job of articulating the problem and how AP is starting to address it, without being heavy-handed.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103420598
NPR does a nice job of providing historical perspective. The threats posed by content piracy were faced by AP and other major publishers with every technological advance -- the teletype, radio, television, etc. At each stage the problem was addressed and publishers continued to flourish. The same will happen with the current crisis. The Internet is the best thing (and worse thing) to happen to publishers since the press was invented. How they collectively deal with the current threat will determine their fortunes.
iCopyright has been working on this issue for the better part of 10 years. We are only surprised that it took this long for the problem to come to a head and for the major publishers to proactively step-up to address it.
Here we are!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103420598
NPR does a nice job of providing historical perspective. The threats posed by content piracy were faced by AP and other major publishers with every technological advance -- the teletype, radio, television, etc. At each stage the problem was addressed and publishers continued to flourish. The same will happen with the current crisis. The Internet is the best thing (and worse thing) to happen to publishers since the press was invented. How they collectively deal with the current threat will determine their fortunes.
iCopyright has been working on this issue for the better part of 10 years. We are only surprised that it took this long for the problem to come to a head and for the major publishers to proactively step-up to address it.
Here we are!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
I have seen the content pirate and he is us
At the risk of being branded a plagiarist, allow me to paraphrase the comic strip character Pogo, who said, "I have seen the enemy and he is us." In the heated battle that is going on today between news publishers, search engines and bloggers over the use (or misuse) of publisher content, let me say that, "I have seen the content pirate and he is us!"
Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP board and CEO of MediaNews Group, recently said, “I think our industry has been very timid about protecting our content, probably because we've done so well in the past few years that we didn't recognize that misappropriation is as serious an issue as it is. As we're now relooking at business models, it's become clear that we must protect the rights of our content. ... We perhaps have been timid about enforcing [those rights]. No more. We own the content but we've let those who spend very little, if any, get the most advantage from it.”
Mr. Singleton was expressing the frustration felt by many publishers (some of them our clients) who believe they create all the content, but Google and other aggregators, including millions of bloggers, reap most of the benefits. There's some truth to that, but I don't think Google or the blogosphere are the ultimate enemy. I think the publishing industry has a solid legal argument that the headlines and "snippets" used by search engines and blogs are NOT covered by fair use. If you are in the business of supplying headlines and snippets and that is what others are copying and monetizing at your expense, then copyright applies. It certainly applies if millions of people can click the "Cached" link that appears next to the snippet to read the full article without ever having to visit the publisher's site. If you are a photographer and someone takes parts of your photos, i.e., snippets, and sells them to others, or monetizes them with ads, or creates derivative works with them, you will likely insist that your copyrights have been infringed. If they are taking the entire photo, then you will likely rush to the court house because that's a slam dunk case of infringement.
That said, the "snippet" battle with Google is a red herring that masks the larger problem of content piracy and why publishers are failing to monetize their works. I truly believe that the snippet battle will be resolved amicably between the publishers and the search engines. They need each other. The digital content ecosystem can not thrive without good content and easy ways to find that content. Ken Doctor wrote an excellent piece for PaidContent.org that suggests a possible resolution: A Solution To The Newspaper Industry’s Battle With Google
The bigger problem, in my view, is the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about and no one, except iCopyright (pat on back), is trying to address. The vast majority of content that is pirated and used for commercial purposes -- with no attribution, links, or compensation to the publisher -- is perpetrated by millions of people everyday in the performance of their jobs.
Most people would not accept stolen goods from a friend. Most employers would not buy software and load it on multiple computers, unless they had a site license to do so. But that is exactly what is going on with publisher content. I get two or three emails a day from well meaning colleaques containing full articles that were cut-and-pasted from sites like CNN and The New York Times. I see full articles posted on blogs and company web sites that I know were shamelessly "borrowed" from the creators. When asked, most will innocently say that the content was passed to them by someone else and they did not think to ask if it was okay to copy it, email it, or post it. The vast majority of pirated content that is "consumed" for commercial purposes is not coming from the search engines or even scraped from publisher websites. It is coming from people who got it from other people, who got it from who knows where.
Outsell, Inc. wrote a research report several years ago entitled, The Copyright Pandemic. Their research estimated 56 billion documents (articles, photos) circulated each year without permission, much of it for commercial purposes. I'll bet publishers wished they had $1 for every one of those copied and shared documents. Publishers can look at Google as the source of their failing empires, but it is "us" that is causing their downfall. What's the solution? Glad you asked!
The solution is a simple matter of tagging each and every piece of content with a unique identifier that states what rights the sender or poster has. The tag is part of the publisher's copyright notice which accompanies each piece of content, whether an article, image, video, or music file. Whenever anyone hands me a copy of an article, or emails me an article, or my webmaster posts an article on our website, the first thing I do is look at the copyright notice and tag to verify that they have the rights to be using it and sharing it with me. If there is no copyright notice attached and no proof-of-license to make copies, post, or email, I delete it. I wouldn't drive a car without a valid license plate. Why would I put my company and my reputation at risk by using copyrighted content without the owner's expressed permission? The enemy is us and we would not be pirates if everyone could see that we were. Publishers and creators could again enjoy the fruits of their labor.
To learn more about this "License Verification Tag" download this 2-page overview:
The iCopyright Platform: A Virtuous Circle for Content Monetization
~Mike O'Donnell
mike@icopyright.com
Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP board and CEO of MediaNews Group, recently said, “I think our industry has been very timid about protecting our content, probably because we've done so well in the past few years that we didn't recognize that misappropriation is as serious an issue as it is. As we're now relooking at business models, it's become clear that we must protect the rights of our content. ... We perhaps have been timid about enforcing [those rights]. No more. We own the content but we've let those who spend very little, if any, get the most advantage from it.”
Mr. Singleton was expressing the frustration felt by many publishers (some of them our clients) who believe they create all the content, but Google and other aggregators, including millions of bloggers, reap most of the benefits. There's some truth to that, but I don't think Google or the blogosphere are the ultimate enemy. I think the publishing industry has a solid legal argument that the headlines and "snippets" used by search engines and blogs are NOT covered by fair use. If you are in the business of supplying headlines and snippets and that is what others are copying and monetizing at your expense, then copyright applies. It certainly applies if millions of people can click the "Cached" link that appears next to the snippet to read the full article without ever having to visit the publisher's site. If you are a photographer and someone takes parts of your photos, i.e., snippets, and sells them to others, or monetizes them with ads, or creates derivative works with them, you will likely insist that your copyrights have been infringed. If they are taking the entire photo, then you will likely rush to the court house because that's a slam dunk case of infringement.
That said, the "snippet" battle with Google is a red herring that masks the larger problem of content piracy and why publishers are failing to monetize their works. I truly believe that the snippet battle will be resolved amicably between the publishers and the search engines. They need each other. The digital content ecosystem can not thrive without good content and easy ways to find that content. Ken Doctor wrote an excellent piece for PaidContent.org that suggests a possible resolution: A Solution To The Newspaper Industry’s Battle With Google
The bigger problem, in my view, is the dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about and no one, except iCopyright (pat on back), is trying to address. The vast majority of content that is pirated and used for commercial purposes -- with no attribution, links, or compensation to the publisher -- is perpetrated by millions of people everyday in the performance of their jobs.
Most people would not accept stolen goods from a friend. Most employers would not buy software and load it on multiple computers, unless they had a site license to do so. But that is exactly what is going on with publisher content. I get two or three emails a day from well meaning colleaques containing full articles that were cut-and-pasted from sites like CNN and The New York Times. I see full articles posted on blogs and company web sites that I know were shamelessly "borrowed" from the creators. When asked, most will innocently say that the content was passed to them by someone else and they did not think to ask if it was okay to copy it, email it, or post it. The vast majority of pirated content that is "consumed" for commercial purposes is not coming from the search engines or even scraped from publisher websites. It is coming from people who got it from other people, who got it from who knows where.
Outsell, Inc. wrote a research report several years ago entitled, The Copyright Pandemic. Their research estimated 56 billion documents (articles, photos) circulated each year without permission, much of it for commercial purposes. I'll bet publishers wished they had $1 for every one of those copied and shared documents. Publishers can look at Google as the source of their failing empires, but it is "us" that is causing their downfall. What's the solution? Glad you asked!
The solution is a simple matter of tagging each and every piece of content with a unique identifier that states what rights the sender or poster has. The tag is part of the publisher's copyright notice which accompanies each piece of content, whether an article, image, video, or music file. Whenever anyone hands me a copy of an article, or emails me an article, or my webmaster posts an article on our website, the first thing I do is look at the copyright notice and tag to verify that they have the rights to be using it and sharing it with me. If there is no copyright notice attached and no proof-of-license to make copies, post, or email, I delete it. I wouldn't drive a car without a valid license plate. Why would I put my company and my reputation at risk by using copyrighted content without the owner's expressed permission? The enemy is us and we would not be pirates if everyone could see that we were. Publishers and creators could again enjoy the fruits of their labor.
To learn more about this "License Verification Tag" download this 2-page overview:
The iCopyright Platform: A Virtuous Circle for Content Monetization
~Mike O'Donnell
mike@icopyright.com
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Article Tools Whitepaper
Just published, this paper presents the findings of a recent user survey and independent usability testing of article tools. This paper will change the way you think about the Print Email Save Post Share tools used on thousands of news and information websites.
Article tools and the copyright notice can work in concert to greatly improve the usability of content and increase publisher revenue, while reducing piracy of copyrighted content. Most publishers are missing the boat. Article tools give readers the green light to do something with content besides read it. So does the copyright notice if it is implemented as an interactive link and not as static text.
http://info.icopyright.com/article-tools-whitepaper.asp
Article tools and the copyright notice can work in concert to greatly improve the usability of content and increase publisher revenue, while reducing piracy of copyrighted content. Most publishers are missing the boat. Article tools give readers the green light to do something with content besides read it. So does the copyright notice if it is implemented as an interactive link and not as static text.
http://info.icopyright.com/article-tools-whitepaper.asp
Monday, January 12, 2009
Let's Invent iTunes for News: New York Times, January 12, 2009
David Carr's article, "Let's Invent an iTune for News," New York Times, January 11, 2009, made my year -- and it's only January 12th! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/12/business/media/12carr.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
It is refreshing to finally hear someone in the media, who writes about the media, making sense about the value of news content and the sea change that is required to preserve that value. Newspapers like the New York Times not only produce high value content, they are essential to a free and educated society. There is no way that tweets, blogs and stripped-down news aggregators could ever fill the gap. What news would they aggregate if the respected news sources disappeared? We would be a far poorer society without the likes of the New York Times and other metro dailies.
News articles are as valuable to a newspaper as songs are to an album. But unlike songs that one can buy through iTunes and similar services, newspapers have not organized themselves to sell articles. In fact, they go out of their way to give articles away. Newspapers think they are in the newspaper business just like music labels thought they were in the album business. In reality, newspapers are in the article business.
Just about every major online newspaper actively promotes free use and free distribution of articles, with no strings. It could be argued that the major daily newspapers actually created the cut-and-paste culture. Newspapers invented the thing that is killing them. It was the news industry that gave us the Print, Email, Save, and Share links on every article. These links tell readers, "Take our content, do what you want with it, it's free!" iCopyright has conducted usability studies of online news sites and the use of these links. We know this to be a fact.
Newspapers are to articles what P2P networks are to songs -- a mechanism to freely take, use and redistribute content as one sees fit. But unlike the songs on P2P networks, news articles can be taken with the implicit permission of the owners. To make matters worse, newspapers like the New York Times have helped to create a culture of "free use entitlement" that has negatively impacted B2B publishers, who were not so keen on letting users copy their content for free. We hear it all the time from users. "The New York Times lets me take their content. You should be grateful that I have taken and posted your content. Why are you asking me to pay for it?"
What is a good business model? Carr suggests iTunes for news. iTunes for news already exists! The publishers and editors just don't use it. The first thing that needs to happen is for the major news providers to stop thinking that their content has no value other than for advertiser-supported first publishing. A media company like The New York Times has the clout to lead the way to a viable and sustainable model.
The iTunes model has to be tweaked for news content. Users buy songs from iTunes because they have already heard the song and they want to play it over-and-over. Very few users are going to pay to read an article with no way of knowing if it is a good article, or one that interests them, anymore than a user is going to buy a song they have not heard. However, once the user has read the article (supported by first-use advertisement), the iTunes model kicks in to allow them to easily print, email, save, share, post, and republish for commercial (work) purposes, for a fee. The publishing industry would earn billions of dollars in new revenue with this model. As with music, the money is in the reuse of news, not the first use (view).
Keep preaching, David. God knows the newspaper industry needs a credible prophet right now.
It is refreshing to finally hear someone in the media, who writes about the media, making sense about the value of news content and the sea change that is required to preserve that value. Newspapers like the New York Times not only produce high value content, they are essential to a free and educated society. There is no way that tweets, blogs and stripped-down news aggregators could ever fill the gap. What news would they aggregate if the respected news sources disappeared? We would be a far poorer society without the likes of the New York Times and other metro dailies.
News articles are as valuable to a newspaper as songs are to an album. But unlike songs that one can buy through iTunes and similar services, newspapers have not organized themselves to sell articles. In fact, they go out of their way to give articles away. Newspapers think they are in the newspaper business just like music labels thought they were in the album business. In reality, newspapers are in the article business.
Just about every major online newspaper actively promotes free use and free distribution of articles, with no strings. It could be argued that the major daily newspapers actually created the cut-and-paste culture. Newspapers invented the thing that is killing them. It was the news industry that gave us the Print, Email, Save, and Share links on every article. These links tell readers, "Take our content, do what you want with it, it's free!" iCopyright has conducted usability studies of online news sites and the use of these links. We know this to be a fact.
Newspapers are to articles what P2P networks are to songs -- a mechanism to freely take, use and redistribute content as one sees fit. But unlike the songs on P2P networks, news articles can be taken with the implicit permission of the owners. To make matters worse, newspapers like the New York Times have helped to create a culture of "free use entitlement" that has negatively impacted B2B publishers, who were not so keen on letting users copy their content for free. We hear it all the time from users. "The New York Times lets me take their content. You should be grateful that I have taken and posted your content. Why are you asking me to pay for it?"
What is a good business model? Carr suggests iTunes for news. iTunes for news already exists! The publishers and editors just don't use it. The first thing that needs to happen is for the major news providers to stop thinking that their content has no value other than for advertiser-supported first publishing. A media company like The New York Times has the clout to lead the way to a viable and sustainable model.
The iTunes model has to be tweaked for news content. Users buy songs from iTunes because they have already heard the song and they want to play it over-and-over. Very few users are going to pay to read an article with no way of knowing if it is a good article, or one that interests them, anymore than a user is going to buy a song they have not heard. However, once the user has read the article (supported by first-use advertisement), the iTunes model kicks in to allow them to easily print, email, save, share, post, and republish for commercial (work) purposes, for a fee. The publishing industry would earn billions of dollars in new revenue with this model. As with music, the money is in the reuse of news, not the first use (view).
Keep preaching, David. God knows the newspaper industry needs a credible prophet right now.
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