In the old days one heard speculation about bundling a great number of newspapers and blogs into a single-price access model, but in retrospect this probably never had much financial potential, for reasons which by now should be clear. What would an “all-you-can-eat buffet for economists” mean? And who if anyone would benefit from it?
What such a buffet would mean would be that by paying one amount per month you could read as much as you want from the NYT, WSJ, existing blogs, plus all of the new economics blogs that would emerge because bloggers would now be directly compensated by getting a share of the subscription money, perhaps in proportion to the number of views of their posts or some other metric. The beneficiaries would be readers who would read more NYT and WSJ articles if there were no paywall and readers of the new blogs that emerge.
And the biggest beneficiaries of all will be people who save time not having to click on the “close” window on all those unwanted pop-up ads!!!! Because with a bundled subscription, we can finally have content without advertising. The current newspaper model is headed toward the opposite.
This “club” might not be the most viable model. I once thought it would be, but over time I have become convinced that the patronage model will win out. That is, in the end, the NYT will be a money-losing enterprise, but some wealthy patron or patrons will be happy to keep it going. Similarly, those bloggers who want money will have to find patrons to support them. Whether content is better under a patronage model or under a club model is not clear.
I see a growing trend towards patronage. The trouble is that the patrons aren’t eternally passive investors, and eventually want some control and voice, or make some lines pretty clear to the management, at least on some issues.
And eventually the goals of a patron (e.g. composition of the target audience) will come into conflict with the established brand and reputation, and the long-standing patterns of corporate culture and business practices. Look at Chris Hughes and The New Republic.
But solve for equilibrium. Established outlets like the NYT and Washington Post will probably still need patrons like Slim and Bezos, but they are going to be vary wary about such possible influence, and when they shop around for patrons, there is going to be a big trade-off between money and assurances of minimal disruption.
Also, to the extent any content-provider remains an influential vector for marketing, you will see a move away from obvious ads (pictures, videos, pop-ops, etc.) and into ‘articles’ that purport to be ‘reporting’ but are really just glorified pay-for-play press releases from the sponsoring advertising companies. A lot of webzines already do this and make it an important part of their business model and revenue stream. Upworthy is probably the most obvious, but there are lots of others.
So, I would expect to see the NYT, for instance, write a lot more articles about every urban resident’s favorites obsession – real estate – and slip in the middle of an article that purports to be ‘reporting’ a line like,
News, or ad? In the mind of the reader, “Oh, new apartments supply in UWS?! How can I get ahead of the curve … wait! They mentioned there was a waiting list! Huh, google Berkshire … oh, there it is! Is says here one needs to make an appointment, so …”
Carlos Slim gets what he wants out of the New York Times — little focus on monopolies in Mexico and demonization of immigration skeptics in the U.S. (Slim profits exorbitantly on calls between the two countries). It’s been a wonderful investment in protecting his fortune.
I don’t normally read the NYT, but I was graced with the presence of New Yorkers this holiday season, and they were good enough to not only go out and buy that paper locally, but leave them about my house for me to read.
You have to appreciate the product that is the NYT. It is well written, with many long, in depth articles. One wonders how people have time to read it.
With that said, couldn’t this product be produced at a fraction of its current cost? I’m thinking that some Indian outsourcing could do wonders. Why do “journalists” need to be New Yorkers, or even Americans?
Some random points. High production value but biased could describe NYT or NPR. Maybe the high production values and the bias are both a result of monopoly factors. There seems to be a lot of concern about how media (and rock stars) are going to retain the lifestyle they are used to but not a lot of discussion about whether they deserved that lifestyle in the first place. Maybe when they are in a more perfect competition regime they will have to compete to an even greater degree on veracity and this might offset the patronage problems.