By Zachary M. Seward
It’s happening. Yesterday we revealed Steve Brill’s latest moves toward charging readers of newspaper websites, and separately, Philadelphia Inquirer publisher Brian Tierney said he would erect an online pay wall by the end of the year. Those developments followed similar statements by executives of Hearst Corp. and MediaNews Group, among other newspaper companies.
As these paid-content models develop, a key question is how the broader news ecosystem — of blogs, radio, TV, and mediums still unknown — will react to the opportunity. That subject came up in my conversation with Brill on Monday:
Me: There’s certainly a working theory out there that the minute any of those big-city papers start charging, they’re going to encourage competition that they don’t currently have. That the free blogs that are much derided now for not providing reporting will, in fact, you know, begin to put up much, much more competition—
Brill: Why? Why will they be able to? How are they going to pay for it?
Me: Perhaps by starting with a model that is, you know, that isn’t a 150-person newsroom, and so even if the end product is not as good, it’s free, and that’s sort of the hardest thing to compete with.
Brill: But again, if what you’re striving for is to get the 5 or 10 percent of your most committed readers to pay, then you can afford to have that happen. And you can’t afford not to do it.
That’s just a taste of our 23-minute chat, which you can listen to below (or download here). Much of my interview with Brill focused on slides he presented to newspaper executives last week, which I’ve embedded again after the jump. There’s also a full transcript of the conversation with some references explained by links.
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