Quote:
Originally Posted by Nate the great
crossposted from [URL="http://www.the-digital-reader.com/"] For thos who don't know, this means they’re going to make you start paying to read the news on their website. Fine by me; I’ll just get my news elsewhere. From the announcement: |
We all know that this isn't going to work out. The question is, why not? I mean, we are willing to buy a newspaper at a dollar a day, so why not a webpaper?
Maybe it's because the context of a webpaper is the internet browser, and internet browser pages are "free." That is, when we go to a webpage, we are not often confronted immediately with a demand for logging in and doing the password thing, and even when we are, there's no cost associated with the process. So psychologically, we are not prepared to deal with the idea that something on a webpage should be paid for.
So maybe what is needed is a different context.
Apparently the New York Times thinks so - check out [URL="https://timesreader.nytimes.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/TimesReader?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&campaign Id=36Q38"] - and notice how like an iPad the demo looks.
It seems to me that what newspapers should try to sell is not content, but structure. By "structure," I mean a digital equivalent of the way a newspaper layout and ordering is structured in a print paper. And one thing that could be done would be to allow you to structure your own reading procedure.
For example, I do not trust the NYT to accurately report political news. So I never read the first section of the newspaper. I don't actually buy the NYT, but from time to time I find a copy in a coffee shop. I sit down, discard the front section immediately, then read the Arts or the Technology or Science sections. But I might be willing to pay if the first thing I saw when I opened the NYT app was what I wanted to read rather than the front page. Or maybe a "home page" with the topics or writers I have previously identified set up for me. Or maybe if I could "star" articles to read later, saved for me in a "read later" section maintained until I unstarred the article.
It will be interesting to see if anything like this is incorporated into their iPad app.