Looking Forward

February 07, 2009

Looking Forward

In a comment on an earlier post here, Pat Thornton nails the challenge for news organizations:

I would really like the discussion to move to ways to create products, services and tools that people would be willing to pay for, rather than trying to get people to pay for content we know they don't value enough to pay for.

That's exactly the issue. There are a lot of people outside of the traditional news business thinking about this. But there aren't nearly enough on the inside thinking the same thoughts–and creating new products. They're still trying to defend the old models. The old models are broken. We have to move forward and create new kinds of products that will attract audiences–and ways to monetize those new audiences.

Feb 7, 2009 3:00:29 PM | Advertising, Business, Magazines, Newspapers, Social Media, The Web

2 Comments

If you want to be more honest, and less self delusional about your discussion to move to ways to create products, services and tools that people would be willing to pay for - do not attempt to ignore or trivialize this factor:

If someone else who is passionate or knowledgeable about any subject is offering writing about it for free, then as long as the quality thereof is at least acceptable most people will chose the free writing over text that costs them money.

It doesn't matter what degrees you have. It doesn't matter how aesthetically pleasing your page layouts are. It won't matter how many accolades your writing or the posting site have garnered.

Free content of decent quality beats even excellent content that costs money for most people.

Enjoy.

Posted by: Phogg | February 07, 2009 at 10:25 PM