[February 26, 2009] OPINION: Paying to play: Newspapers may soon see online changes Tweet Feb 26, 2009 (The Daily Republic - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- I have a question for you: If there are two different lemonade stands across the street from each other and both produce the exact same lemonade, which one would you visit? Tough to say, right? How about if I throw this little addendum on the question: Same two lemonade stands, yet one charges a quarter for a cup and the other one gives it away free. Now which stand would you go to? If you didn't answer the free one, I think you are fooling yourself. Now let me ask you this: If a newspaper produces a printed version of the news and attempts to charge for it yet gives roughly the same content away on the Internet for free, what do you think will happen to said newspaper? Why is it that the newspaper industry is so perplexed by the shape it is in? I have to tell you that I rarely can go a day without someone asking me what I think about the future for this business. I wish that I had the answer, but I will tell you that my belief is if we continue to give away our product for free, then I don't like where we are headed. In the ever-changing world of news gathering, a not-so-new idea has come back to the forefront recently: Pay-for-content news sites. Newspapers, and I venture to guess radio as well as television, are struggling with this thing we call the Internet, and how do we continue to survive in the wave of free sites? This issue is so hot right now that Time magazine's cover story last week was "How to Save Your Newspaper: A Modest Proposal." In it, author Walter Isaacson argues that print media must find a simple way to charge online readers a small fee for the content they want. If that doesn't happen, journalists will go extinct and, with them, the information they gather. "The key to attracting online revenue, I think, is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micropayment," Isaacson writes. "We need something like digital coins or an E-ZPass digital wallet -- a one-click system with a really simple interface that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge." This idea would be to charge a fee to read the paper that day online. Think of it like a newsstand. There would be two online options; one would include a monthly fee (subscription) that would give the reader unlimited access all month long, the second would be to pay for it on a daily basis. It is very similar to how things work with the printed paper. I recently read a column by Fargo Forum Managing Editor Matt Von Pinnon, who laid out some of the issues that we are all facing in this wave of new technology. Von Pinnon points out in his column that, "When the Web started catching on in the mid-1990s, newspapers and other forms of traditional media were convinced to start putting their news and advertising online so as to not be left behind in the cultural shift from a declining print audience to a growing online audience. This was all sort of fine and good until last year, when, as Isaacson notes, 'a tipping point occurred (and) more people in the U.S. got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines.' "The difference between the traditional print business model and the online model is that the latter relies solely on advertising, dismissing two other traditional revenue sources: newsstand sales and subscriptions. The online model is akin to the broadcast model of TV and radio. Those in the print industry who supported fashioning the online newspaper world like the broadcast world have largely won out over the years, arguing you can't turn back the clock and that Web readers will not support a subscriber or fee-based system. But many sense that tide is beginning to turn." Let me just say that my idea is not about free or not free, it is about protecting what we do each day -- bringing you good, local, credible content. We manufacture a product, we call that product a news story and that is what I feel is at risk. We really do not care what form you may want it in, paper or plastic, we just care that you still do in fact want it. And our feeling is if we do it well, there is a value that can be placed on it. Von Pinnon goes on to say that "A newspaper's power has always been in its reach -- the number of reporters on the street gathering news and the number of people paying to read that news. As Time's Isaacson aptly points out: 'Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content ... is more popular than ever -- even (in fact, especially) among young people.' In endorsing the idea of paid content last month, New York Times columnist David Carr wrote, 'With newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also to news itself.' " So I ask you: Would you pay for news online if it was no longer offered for free? Would you pay a little to know more about your city, state, nation or world? Let me know what you think. To see more of The Daily Republic, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mitchellrepublic.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Daily Republic, Mitchell, S.D. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. 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