Is a paywall the same as censorship?

 Posted by on 17 January 2010  Modern Life
Jan 172010
 

According to New York magazine, the era of free online news content may be coming to a close. The New York Times is planning to start charging for some content.

I have some thoughts on this, but I’d like to spark a discussion in the comments, so that it’s not just me ranting on the blog. Please, read the piece — the New York Times’ proposal is a little different from what’s been discussed around most newspapers — and chime in below.

To start things off, though, I’d like to say that I’m in love with the idea of the Internet as a gigantic web of interconnected links. The power of the Internet comes, partially, comes from its ability to link anything to anything. Two things break this: password protection, and unlinkable Flash content. URL shorteners like bit.ly are worrisome as well (what happens to all those links if bit.ly goes under?).

When China says “conform to our beliefs or we won’t let that site be accessed” it’s censorship. But isn’t forcing people to pay a subscription or disallowing them somewhat the same? If you think it’s not, would you also agree that it’s okay to charge people money for the privilege of voting? And isn’t the free flow of information just as crucial to democracy as voting?

Grant Hamilton

  • Colin

    Your logic is faulty.

    First, voting is not reading information in a news story…apples and oranges.

    2nd, censorship is the denial of information, period. Paying for goods, services or information is not denial – it’s an exchange.
    Exchange by definition involves something moving or conveyed, not blocked. I’ve come up against China’s Great Firewall, in China…it’s quite a bit different than someone saying “I worked hard to create this information and want to be renumerated for it.”

    You pay for your groceries – does that mean the same thing as starvation? Is being charged at the theatre to see a movie also censorship?

    Maybe this is a few too many chintzy clients as a photographer but, I don’t buy into this everything-for-free utopia being pushed by so many on the Net. The premise is lame and discredited – that by giving away my expertise in something for nothing today, that maybe I’ll get some vague promise of something tomorrow (maybe).

    It’s not happening.

    That’s likely why you’re seeing a move away from free-for-all. I won’t deny a failure by the present gatekeepers of the MSM to evolve with the changing landscape – to put narrow short term thinking above their duty as a pillar of a free society…but that’s not a good enough reason for what free-for-all really is: freeloading.

  • Reader

    Yes, I know the MSM has its flaws, but our society depends on a certain level of professional scrutiny. Hell, our BLOGS depend on a certain level of professional scrutiny.

    If we lose more reporters at institutions like the New York Times, we lose more democracy. I’d not only be in favor of them charging, I’d start boycotting anything and anyone who actively bitched when they did. As long as a MSM outlet is willing to invest in actual reporting – and the Times is the flagship of that strategy – then I’m all for paying them their due.

  • thebanana

    Full confession…I haven’t read the article yet, but I will. My first thoughts are that paying for news is simply one business model, and generally seen as old school. News organizations have other options when it comes to remunerating their reporters via the web, ie paid ads or paywalls. Just another business model, not nirvana.

  • Matt Goerzen

    One of the arguments for staying free online that was mentioned in the article, was that readers in China and India who perhaps couldn’t afford a subscription would be lost “behind the wall” so to speak.

    I’m guessing that this fact, in part at least, is what Grant condemns as censorship, the idea that the poor masses won’t have access to necessary information. And for those who believe that the free flow of information is necessary for democracy to work, it’s a powerful argument to keep things free – or at least cheap.

    But I must admit I didn’t see that noble sentiment brought forward in the Times article. What I saw were news editors worried about losing influence in the world, and losing readers, specifically column readers, making the columnists rather huffy about the whole thing.

    I would turn your attention to this study:

    http://baltimorebrew.com/blog/2010/01/11/study-finds-baltimore-suns-output-has-plummeted-and-new-media-arent-yet-filling-in-the-gap/

    Here’s one of the opening lines: “Worried about what’s ailing the American news media, researchers from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at one week of Baltimore news coverage last summer and found traditional media — the Sun, television and the business publications — still do most (61 percent) of the original reporting around here.”

    Grant I’m sure you’ve already seen a version of this study somewhere…. perhaps written about it too, I don’t recall. Reading further down though, you will discover that the Sun wrote 73 per cent fewer stories for one week in 2009, than it did in 1991. It also notes that the media use government press releases more and more in place of real journalism.

    To be quite honest, I don’t mind paying for content. But it needs to be good content. If I want to read a government press release, I’ll go to a government website, where I know I’m being snowballed. Unless a magazine or newspaper can prove it has content nobody else does, putting that content behind a wall is futile at best.

    On the other hand, the Times has a plethora of great writers, and while they may lose some free readers, they have to pay those writers somehow. And with ad sales what they have been in recent times, relying mainly on ads and not news sales is not a sustainable formula, for the moment at least. Until someone comes up with a brilliant workable model, the spectre of paying for news content will be ever-present.

    But to address your main question, is demanding payment for content censorship? No. Here I would agree with Colin. I will always believe that a person’s work needs to be properly remunerated. That said, while it may be the right decision for the Times to revert to an older financial model, I must admit that there’s no guarantee it will work for its owners. Once the genie’s out of the bottle, it’s difficult to get ‘im back inside.

    We will see. Lord knows I’ll be watching.

  • Colin

    Good points Matt.

    I seem to remember sitting with Grant in a pub (where so many ideas to save the world originate) and wondering why the iTunes model can’t be applied to online journalism.
    You open an account, link it with your credit card or PayPal, and beyond a barebones free site you pay a small fee – say, 10 or 20 cents – for additional content.
    It’s cheap enough for readers to go for (there’s lots of free music yet people will pay for quality legal songs) and papers get instant feedback to what readers want.

    One thing is for sure – newspapers who don’t give quality content, in whatever form, are going to go bankrupt. I wonder how many of them really get that.

  • oregon dave

    Colin, you’ve nailed it.

    I’ve been on both sides of the fence – as an independent designer whose work has been ‘stolen’ and as a Creative Manager for a print/online news org.

    The ‘all for free’ model is inherently flawed – the bigs like MSN and CNN have the cable channel revenue to help steady the ship – print pubs delving into online are the truly vulnerable ones. But asking for users to subscribe to the individual outlet is perhaps even worse than the free model. The result will likely be a subscription base primarily made up of journalists – who will in turn release their own article citing info compiled from paid pubs. That’s a great way to cement you irrelevance.

    But as Colin mentioned – a single, globally accepted method of one click payment is the only model i can come up with that will work for all three parties – company, employee and consumer. Clicking a ‘BUY THIS ARTICLE’ button for 5 cents US will go over much better than hitting the dead-end ‘subscription form’ wall currently in place. They’ve just got to make it quick, easy and non intrusive.

    But in the end, the pay-for-content model isn’t going to work for every outlet – one of the truly awesome things about the internet is being able to find seemingly useless info about a senselessly specific topic (and lots of it). That’s something I (and most folks) are simply unwilling to pay for – take away that, and you’ve taken away one of the things that makes the internet such an asset. The pay model will have to be used surgically to ultimately reap benefits without turning away your user base.

  • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

    Here’s an interesting take: Media outlets should market their information as PREMIUM info, must like bottled water manufacturers make people pay through the nose for something that’s essentially the same as they can get from the tap, for free.

    Jeremy Gilbert explores the idea in depth here.

    The NYTimes, by the way, is looking at a metered model. That is, you’ll get a certain number of articles for free, and then you have to pay. I think this is interesting — if you’re a casual reader, it’ll be free — like picking up the copy in the lunchroom at work. But if you’re a dedicated reader, you’ll have to subscribe.

    It almost replicates the offline market, in that respect.

    Not everyone agrees.

  • http://www.cgnoto.com Noto

    I for one am a much bigger fan of the pay model than I ever thought I would be, I believe that I’ve even once or twice said in the past “a paid website will never work,” because of some of the reasons Grant has stated about the love and purity of a “free internet”. Although I do have to agree with Collin about the pay-model Not being a censorship.

    I find it very hard to come up with my own solid opinion on this matter though… There is incredibly compelling arguments on both sides. I think I’ve started to write 3 different replies to this and then decided against my points half way through each time.

    Personally thoughI do believe that the NYTImes will do just fine if they went fully paid, its got enough credibility behind it and enough readers worldwide that it will be just fine.

    I wonder if this will start a new trend in News Stories on torrent sites? hmmmm…..