An iTunes for news?

Interesting! Although I recently posted about the possible future of newspapers, I’m obviously not alone. My friend Curtis is starting a conversation over at his blog, too. And then I get linked to these very worthy pieces online:

1. From the New York Times:

If print wants to perform a cashectomy on users, it should probably look to what happened with music, an industry in which people once paid handsomely for records, then tapes, then CDs, that was overtaken by the expectation that the same product should be free.

David Carr argues that the (expensive) business of professional journalism needs to be supported, and can’t be by the pittance that is online advertising. He and I agree there. But then he cites subscriber-supported models as the wave of the future, and there I disagree. With few exceptions, free content has become the norm online, and trying to erect new subscriber walls around news content will infuriate readers, who will flock to the remaining free sites.

Of iTunes, and a couple of other services, he says:

The paid option outweighs the hassle and time of the free ones.

Sure. But that doesn’t work for news, I don’t think. For better or for worse, people want to have a particular song, by a particular artist and a different pop single just doesn’t cut it when you really need the latest and greatest. It’s different for news. Because journalism has tried — successfully — to standardize its voice and to be unbiased, it’s also pretty interchangeable. The differences between news sites are just not that important, and I think readers will jettison one site for another PDQ.

2. In a Slate-associated blog, Jack Shafer responds, saying that there is a nascent iTunes-for-newspapers in the Amazon Kindle. But he doesn’t like it:

What makes the Kindle stink for newspaper publishers is that it’s designed to turn their customers into Amazon customers just as the iTunes store was designed to turn the music labels’ customers into Apple customers, and did. The music labels rue the day they gave Apple the extraordinary leverage they did over their content, so newspapers should beware.

Instead, Shafer argues, newspapers should leapfrog the one-trick-pony Kindle and deliver their content to smartphones and netbooks in a design based on the New York Times “Reader,” which I’ve never personally tried, but is apparently better than the website, so I’m intrigued.

By eschewing the Web browser, the Times Reader also sent the same message the nonbrowser interface for the iTunes sends: This isn’t the Web, dude. This isn’t free. You’re going to have to pay.

Now that’s interesting …

Perhaps there is room for a free website, and a new-format digital edition that is somehow better than the html version? Shafer calls it “News Box” and I’m cautiously curious.

Historically, most newspaper subscriptions pay for only the cost of delivery — the cost of production is borne by the ads. But Shafer also echoes my contention that advertising is valuable content to readers as much as news is. Perhaps there is a market for digital advertising that is not the same as web advertising?