Will You Pay For Online News?

Mar 01, 2009 10:27

The Hearst Corporation is getting ready to charge for online content. Other papers are getting ready to charge for online content, too ( Read more... )

publishing, writing

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curtishart March 1 2009, 17:27:06 UTC
While I enjoy national news, anything beyond headlines I prefer to get form news magazines such as Time or Newsweek.

I more enjoy local news of what's going on in my immediate vicinity.

There's used to be a local newspaper called the Mid-Cities Daily News that I really miss. It only came out once a week but it had only local stuff which I dug.

As for paying for online stuff. Yea, it'll be interesting to see how this pans out when you have nothing unique with your paper as a niche.

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cgronlund March 1 2009, 18:35:32 UTC
I dig our goofy little weekly paper in Roanoke, even if the local Baptist church spends money to tell me how gay people are evil and how I'm going to burn in hell for being an atheist.

I like it because it pertains to MY STREET! I can look at the police reports and see if anything happened that I should know about. I can read about land battles with Westlake, and how we gobbled up Marshall Creek. It's a niche; it's only local stuff pertaining to our little town of 5,500 people, and a few towns around us even smaller.

Like you, anything beyond headlines, I like really getting in and reading stuff that isn't just the same information others are putting out there, too.

If a plane crashes, every source has details of what went wrong, how many fatalities and injuries, and all that stuff. More investigative stuff written by people with passion is what I want.

The stuff that sets an organization apart from others.

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mfelps March 1 2009, 18:24:58 UTC
The Hearst Corporation is just continuing to run towards irrelevance. The number of people willing to pay for news is small indeed, considering I can read the AP wire stuff for free, not to mention the New York Times, and any other number of newspapers.

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cgronlund March 1 2009, 18:45:43 UTC
Exactly!

Unless they suddenly start creating badass, unique content that people talk about, there's no reason to pay.

It very strange and in many ways neat watching old ways crumble and seeing new things coming to the norm.

With the way I viewed writing for so long, I feel like I let opportunities slide by because I was locked into that whole, "This is how it is or should work." When I mentioned podcasting stuff a couple years ago, some people thought it was a goofy idea. I kind of listened and thought, "Yeah, that's selling myself short ( ... )

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mfelps March 2 2009, 02:41:01 UTC
About podcasting: Did you notice that I submitted a story to a podcast? New tech plus a fairly typical submission process and payment. The biggest difference, of course is that the audio version will enter the Public Commons, which I'm okay with, I guess. I'll still have rights to the original story, if I should desire to compile it in an short-story collection some day.

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cgronlund March 2 2009, 03:47:30 UTC
With paying online sources and much easier submissions (not mailing everything with a SASE and waiting forever for a reply or rejection), that alone makes it nicer.

It would also be cool hearing other people read your stuff.

That, and unless you break into larger print magazines, a lot of online sites and podcasts have more people reading and listening than a lot of magazines/zines.

I'd rather make a little money, have people actually read or hear my stuff, and have feedback than make a little more money to have a smaller readership.

Hitting it all is the way to go, and I'm glad you guys are hitting all kinds of stuff.

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