Point of view
The real issue in the paid content debate
By Paul Benjou
Jul 14, 2009 - 1:06:36 AM

When it comes to big ideas, the thought leaders of media tend to dine at the same table and from the same menu, and on the menu of late is the debate over whether web sites can and should raise pay walls, forcing users to pay to gain access to their stories.

There's really not much to debate.

The rise of pay walls, a notion not even on the table just several years ago, is now all but inevitable.

With magazines and newspapers hemorrhaging losses on the print side, their publishers are seeing their future online, but that future, as so many have come to realize, can't be funded by advertising alone. They have no choice but to figure out how to get users to pay for their content.

Indeed, so many in media are wondering how it was that online content was allowed to be made free in the first place. They ask, if a bit rhetorically, how do we now squeeze the toothpaste back into the tube?

But that's not the issue.

Consumers have long paid for content, whether for newspapers or magazines or cable TV. Getting them to pay for, say, The New York Times online won't be the challenge. Many who read the Times also read The Wall Street Journal, and they're already paying for that.

The real puzzle is figuring out just where the line is between what people will pay for and what they expect to continue getting for free.

That line is somewhere. Attempts to find it promise to bring more change, and change for the good, to American journalism than anything in memory.

It will give newspapers and certainly magazines the incentive to reinvest in editorial, researching down to the individual reader the kinds of stories those folks most want to read--and are willing to pay for.

The real problem publishers face is that most of what they now print isn't of any value. It's junk journalism, the sort of stuff that's featured on TV as news, candy for the eyes and ears when nothing better is on.

It's redundant. It's in the morning paper, it's on the TV at breakfast and on the radio driving into work. Why would anyone pay to read it?

To some degree publishers can blame the internet for the explosion of watered-down, or faux, journalism. The emphasis on building site traffic over recent years has led to posting stories with the widest possible appeal, and that's usually stories about celebrities.

But in truth the trend toward faux journalism goes back far longer, well before the internet. And it was motivated by the same venal instincts: to build circulation at whatever the cost.

To suddenly begin to charge for online content may seem akin to squeezing toothpaste back into the tube.

But in truth, for a lot of publications it could turn out to be far more difficult.

They could find themselves faced with the ugliest of truths should they dare put up a pay wall--that folks will simply go elsewhere.

Rather than their salvation, introducing a pay wall will simply hasten their demise. And that may not be a bad thing.