Marketplace

Maybe ironically, the only online (news) content I “pay for” is from NPR. I don’t buy the content directly, but I write them a reasonably big check (bigger than my yearly cable bill anyway) every year because I want them to continue doing what they do.

Regards, Charlie

I agree completely with what Charlie posted. For one large reason: when do people get their news, and how available and easy to access is it?

As for NPR - you can get it in the car, when you wouldn’t be (or shouldn’t be for safety reasons - cell phone, eating, etc.) doing anything else that is productive. That makes the value extremely high.

Regarding print news, I highly doubt it will go away. Yes, phone / laptops / etc are portable, but the relative ease of reading or skimming a newspaper vs. looking up stories on your iPhone (or other device) is substantial. The opportunity cost of reading a paper over waiting for some story to load on my phone that I might not end up reading and having to navigate back again.. clear choice in my mind.

Also, do I trust printed news over almost anything online? Yes. Why? Even thought anything has a slant or perspective to it, someone has to pay to get it out there; whereas a blog or story online could come from anyone, anywhere, for any reason (my post for example ;).

The key will be staying solvent financially. Newsprint might need to become more market focused instead of trying to cover every subject out there; podcasts might still be free but included a short advertisement at the beginning; and NPR will still rely on engaged citizens to support it.

-A

I don’t like to pay for news information. I think everyone as tax payers and citizens of the world is entitled to free news information. It is our right to know what is happening around us. I agree that institutions like the wall street journal charge for providing information from which people can make money. I think that charging for ads should be enough, try doing that for online ads from corporations and a smaller fee for general population. I don’t agree with branding because it might make things more partial…so many things we grew up with are changing….

Can’t do the crossword on my phone. And you can read print media by flashlight when the power is out. :-)

I also agree with A. Rutkowski about the trustworthiness of the print media. Obviously every publication has its own slant, but at least in theory there are human beings who putting their real names on what they write and are being paid to do so. I also regard the Internet publications by known entities - such as Marketplace - as trustworthy, but information from random sources is dubious.

(Kinda reminds me of the famous New Yorker cartoon where two dogs are sitting in front of a computer. Caption: “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.”)

Do I pay for on-line content? Yes I do. I pay for on-line content from trade publications in the fields I work in.

The argument that information “should be free” is, to me, laughable. It takes labor to extract information from where it is hidden, or from the noise of the world, just as it takes labor to extract metals from the earth, food from the soil, or justice from the courts. I believe that people who labor do have a right to develop systems that let them earn a living wage for the service they provide.

I’m a librarian at a university and part of my duties are teaching information literacy classes to students. Ironically I use that New Yorker Internet cartoon. I emphasize the point that more reliable sources to use for doing research and some leisure reading are from traditional news sources. Libraries are under utilized places that pay large sums of money for access to print and online (databases) sources.

I am a casual reader of a few financial news pages. I used to enjoy Nouriel Roubini’s RGE Monitor site until they decided to start charging - $2500 per year for an everday user like me. He is a brilliant guy, but I will never get that kind of value. However, I could see paying “microamounts” for reading individual articles on his or some other quality site. I would consider signing up as a member for an arrangement that charged me a small incremental amount each time I actually used the content.

Do I pay for content? No, and I probably won’t until they figure out a pricing model that more closely approximates the old newspaper and/or cable models. The thing about newspapers was that you paid a modest fee for the entire paper, and subscribers that read every day pay way less. I’m gonna have to pay $.99 to read Ann Landers? To heck with that. Radio and TV has always been free, or if you do pay, such as with cable, satrad, or NPR you get a big bang for the buck.

If I were to have to subscribe to the equivalent of every single piece content that used to be in the newspaper, or on the TV or radio individually that’s some serious coin. My checks to NPR are somewhat more modest than your previous poster…

I get most of my news via NPR (which I pay for). I get the local daily paper delivered - mainly for local news. I hope they can keep up the daily delivery - my dog brings it in every morning, and he’d be really upset if it wasn’t there!

Yes, journalism is dead. In my parents’ era, journalists were like soldiers, going up against Nixon and Johnson. They were trying to fulfill their civic duty as watchdogs and protectors of democracy and freedom. Todays reporters (not journalists) are suck-a$$e$ who have entirely sold out their principles to megalithic corporations and the governments they own. Reporters are cynical and blindly faithful to their masters. I even heard on the Marketplace podcast a reporter state that Obama was wrong to be so honest with the people about our current economic crisis. They see their job, not as seekers of truth, but as information controllers. They are censors, in other words, who paternalistically decide what we see and hear. So to answer your other question, no, I do not pay for “news.” I have in the past, but was disappointed. I would pay for real journalism, written by independent journalists, but how do I find that? Google?