For Position Only: Pay Up or Kiss It Goodbye

Anita Dennis

6

Forgive me if I sound a little excited today, but the more I think about this particular topic, the higher my blood pressure rises. Like any good journalist and Web denizen I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the significance of the dot-com downturn, and while it’s easy to sit back and cluck over faulty business plans and mumble I-told-you-so’s under your breath, the fact is, you and I have to take some responsibility. We’ve been accessing and harnessing volumes of content for free that we would have been paying for in another day and time. And now it looks like we’re paying the consequences.

It really hit home for me when I read in March that Salon.com was launching a premium subscription service in an effort to generate revenue to keep the site from folding. It’s a conundrum that’s hard to swallow: With almost 3 million monthly visitors, Salon.com is one of the most popular online publications existing today, and it has won numerous awards for both its design and editorial content. Yet it’s losing millions every year: $16.6 million last year, hopefully only $5.8 million or less this year. The publication has diligently tried to stem the tide by laying off staff, imposing pay cuts, and cutting other expenses, and the public company is even seeking funds again from investors. But let’s face it, there’s only so much investors can and should be required to cough up. Now it’s Salon.com’s readers’ turn.

What’s the Cost of Free?
I realize that my position might be considered heresy by some. The Web has a long and luxurious history of giving away content. Other publications, both organic to the online format (Slate.com) and print crossovers (the San Jose Mercury News) have tried and failed to get readers to pay for their content. But to continue thinking that companies and publications can go on just giving content away is naïve, and more than a little ridiculous. Believe me, I’m as frightened as anyone that I’m on the same page as Arianna Huffington on this one but I truly believe not only that Salon.com is worth $30 per year but that, in general, it’s high time Web readers put their money where their mouse is.

I do research every day on the Web; without it, my job would be significantly more difficult. My lead time would be longer, my phone bill would be higher, and I’d be on a first-name basis with my neighborhood librarian. I value the ease with which I can report a story, check facts, and stay abreast of topical issues and peers via the Web. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the Internet plays a large role in making my freelance career both possible and profitable.

I also recognize that I’ve been getting away with murder. I pay for the San Francisco Chronicle to leave the newspaper at the doorstep every day; over the years I’ve also paid to have the “New York Times,” the “San Francisco Examiner” (when it was owned by Hearst), the “Wall Street Journal,” “The Nation,” “The New Yorker,” “Bon Appetit,” “Parenting,” and other print publications delivered to me chock full of interesting, thoughtful content in a timely fashion. And yet all this time I’ve also been taking for granted that I can (and do) get tech news online at any number of sites every day, not to mention industry, market, and company data and demographics; cultural, political, and social commentary; and art and literary journals (for the yin side of me), at my discretion, without cluttering my mailbox or bookshelves — and without so much as a chink from my wallet.

Will You Pay to Play?
I doubt that all these news organizations ever intended to give me all this content for free. The initial intent and vision of online journalism was quick access and interactivity. The fact that I can read these online publications for free is simply a legacy of those businesses failing to grasp the medium’s cost structure: How much do those digital bits cost to post online? How much are they worth to readers? These are not easy answers to calculate, especially the latter.

But charging for content can be done successfully, as the “Wall Street Journal” can attest. I hope and expect to see that in the months and years to come print publications build the cost of their online content into their print subscription prices: Buy a subscription to “Tech News Daily” (the print newsletter), get access to more content, including archives, online. Not only will such a strategy build loyalty for the publication but it should also be a bona fide revenue stream that complements online advertising, just as print subscriptions work in tandem with print advertising (depending on the publication’s circulation model).

If you’re like me and want occasional or infrequent access to various publications’ current and archived content, what we really need is a convenient, standard, and easy way to pay as we go. I envision the equivalent of an online debit card, a high-tech equivalent of the 10-cents-a-page photocopier in your local library. It could work something like this: I want an article from “Tech News Daily” but I’m not a print subscriber. Happily, the Web page where I download the piece is completely familiar to me; its design is used at every publication from which I download content. I provide my e-debit card account number and password; the site dumps the PDF article onto my hard drive. My ISP tracks each 10-cent-per-page download (or whatever fee the site charges, perhaps a flat rate per article) and charges my Visa in, say, $100 increments. If I find that I keep returning to a particular site because its content is valuable, I might even cough up for a subscription — for either online-only access or for the print publication itself. Stranger things have happened.

Read ’em and Weep
On a news list to which I subscribe, one Web analyst cynically lamented that Salon.com’s appeal to its readers is probably “one more nail in the [site’s] coffin.” Most Salon.com readers cannot get their companies to pay for the subscription or write it off as a business expense (as WSJ Online subscribers can and do), he noted, and the timing couldn’t be worse, what with consumer confidence growing shaky and discretionary spending being curtailed. Unfortunately, the analyst is probably right. Although I wish I didn’t, I fear that Salon.com’s days are numbered. I’m not sure what it will take, but it seems like the Web-surfing public just isn’t ready to show its appreciation for content with cold, hard cash.

A “BusinessWeek” Online writer who doesn’t think Salon.com’s premium site is worth the money says “pity doesn’t make a great business model.” He’s right, but he’s missing the point. We shouldn’t pay out of pity; we should pay because it’s our ethical responsibility. And I can only hope we recognize that fact before we lose Salon.com and other valuable content sites.