Information IS free (it doesn’t just want to be)
The concept that “information wants to be free“ has been around one way or another since the dawn of time. News at the dawn of time (whenever that was) was most likely passed on by word of mouth – town criers, or neighbours in the cave next door.
These days it’s being touted as, amongst other things, the reason for the downfall of the newspaper industry. As in the table below, only ONE of the UK national papers (the Daily Star, more of a celeb-paper than a newspaper) is up year-on-year in terms of circulation, and some are falling by as much as 15%.
So what does “information wants to be free” actually mean? As far as I can tell, the raw data that is the news (i.e. what’s happened) isn’t something the general public are any more willing to pay for. As long as there are ways to subsidize the collection (or recycling) of news online, some or all of it will be offered free, and therefore no-one will be willing to pay for any of it.
Some commentators bite back with comparisons like “Information doesn’t want to be free any more than gasoline wants to be free” – which is patently nonsense. If I could find a business model to make gasoline free, gasoline would be free, almost overnight, everwhere. For instance, if I when filling my car up I watched 5 ads, filled out a long personal questionnaire, and did my weekly online shopping with an advertiser provider – there’s my free gasoline, job done.
The problem is in part that information covers a huge array of things: from “what time is it?” to “which stock should I buy” – and a whole complicated spectrum in-between. And no-one can draw a line to say where the charging should begin.
The standard response of newspapers is that they don’t actually present the news – they present a mix of news, analysis, and “premium” news such as financial information or sports results, and so on. It’s a form of entertainment. Here’s my take on that:
- I reject the “premium” notion, as all news suffers from the same free-effect: if someone somewhere is willing to offer it for free, everyone everywhere expects to get it for free. Even the FT online has only got around 117,000 paying subscribers around the world
- Analysis indicates that someone (or some people) who are smart have spent (chargeable) time processing the news, and coming up with useful views, slants and summaries - that we ourselves couldn’t or wouldn’t want to do. It might be valid, but then 1billion blogs, including this one, do the analysis piece (if you can call it that in my case) and give it away. Citizen journalists take the photos (more quickly). It may not be as high quality – but then neither is the video on YouTube, and look where that got it
- The entertainmentpiece is probably the piece the Daily Star has got right – light on the news, heavy on entertaining, light and untroubling content
So what can the newspapers actually do?
1. Put up a “pay wall” so high that people actually turn back to cheaper print: As in the Newport Daily News (http://www.newsweek.com/id/214607). I think this is a crazyand short-term idea. In fact a pay wall of any kind is a crazy idea. The common sentiment is that if Murdoch does it, everyone will have to do it. But that’s bizarre thinking. If Murdoch and everyone else puts up a pay wall, I’m launching a free newspaper, and boy am I going to get a lot of traffic.
2. Find smarter ways of monetising content – contextual ads are okay, but tighter links into other ways that consumers spend online is smarter. This is my favorite approach. Newspapers still (just) have a great mixture of brand, loyalty, customers and quality editorial staff – and can churn out the content to support the revenue models to keep the industry alive.
3. Forget chasing the “next big charging thing”like ereaders. Ereaders will very soon (if Apple has its way, by next year) be always-on web terminals. Same story, same argument, and same free
4. Create entertainment products, like the Daily Star. That seems to work, still. But that may in part be because the audience of the Daily Star has yet to become as fully web-enabled, and in time too that advantage will erode
5. Realise that free means “free to the consumer”, not “completely without revenue”
In conclusion, I’m on the “information wants to be free” side, but absolutely don’t believe that means that there won’t be revenue models or a place for what we today know as newspapers. In fact, as information power-houses, they’re really well positioned to take advantage of digital. If only they’d just focus more on that, and less on lamenting the demise of paper and ink.
