There has been quite a bit of buzz around the decision of the NY Times to remove their subscription barrier and make their content free. Many expect the Wall Street Journal, one of the first and most successful paid newspaper sites online, to follow. Even in the non-newspaper world of scientific publishing, Elsevier rolled out their new free, ad-supported oncology site, www.OncologySTAT.com.
Underlying some of these discussions is the somewhat broad pronouncement that paid content is over. Publishers need to make their content free and determine other ways to make money from it.
While it is true that the trends are certainly shifting that way, a post from Joe Espisito on Yale University Library's Liblicense discussion list caught my eye by putting the decision from the NY Times in perspective. Although I don't totally follow Joe's economic mathematics (he questions how much advertising is out there to support this expanding model) because I mean, all of those hundreds of cable television stations still find advertisers, I think there is some truth in his statement that offering free content by using advertising for revenue "may work for the Times or South Park, and Elsevier has a shot with its new portal, but the fate of most advertising-supported businesses is oblivion. Only the strong, the huge, and the totally distinctive survive." (The "totally distinctive" in the last sentence is really the key...)
Although we may look to the NY Times and the WSJ to see which way the paid content winds are blowing, we should not blindly follow their actions. Not all publishers are leading national news sites that can attract millions of eyeballs. Every publisher needs to look at their own situation to determine the balance between charging for content or offering it for free while looking for other revenue opportunities, including advertising. I don't want to dismiss the trend or the need to find new ways to monetize content beyond subscriptions. It's not an easy challenge to solve. But although it is certainly worthwhile to monitor the actions of the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and Elsevier, they should only be inputs into the decision making process, not a final stake in every publisher's plans for paid content.
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