You can't escape talk of the declining news business. On NPR, this morning, there was a segment on nonprofit and employee-owned models. This from an interview news corporation Belo executive vice president Jim Maroney III (publishers of the Dallas Morning News):
Q: Rumors have circulated for a while that perhaps The Dallas Morning News
will begin charging for at least some of its online content. How likely is that
at this point?
A: Two years ago, I would have told you that asking people to pay for
content on the Web is a ridiculous notion. Today, I will tell you it's almost
imperative we experiment with it to see what the consumer will respond to. We
know the consumer is paying for newspapers on Kindle.
So there's that example. Maybe it's something like $5.95 a month. But somebody's
willing to pay for it for some reason. That's a discussion I would bet most
newspapers, including this one, are having in a way where, two years ago,
they didn't.
For us, I wouldn't have thought we'd be having the discussion. I was
convinced it wasn't possible. I am not so certain about that any longer, and
some experimentation will happen. The consumer will tell us if it's a bad idea.
We can try anything we want, but, ultimately, the consumer will tell us if it's
a good idea or not, and if we find out not enough make it worth doing, then,
obviously, whatever experiment we're doing is not a path to go down."
Would you pay for online news? What if the choice was that if you didn't, it might no longer exist?
- Terri Hallenbeck
