Kristin Markway Shaw

Al Tompkins ran part of an interview with Belo VP James Moroney III and highlighted one section in particular where the exec said:

Two years ago, I would have told you that asking people to pay for content on the Web is a ridiculous notion. Today, I will tell you it’s almost imperative we experiment with it to see what the consumer will respond to.

Aren’t we past the stage of experimenting? Didn’t almost every newspaper try paid content at some point? Aside from my beliefs about the possibilities of paying for articles, archives and what-not, this makes it sound like the idea is brand new. Oh gosh, why didn’t we think of that before?

And I truly wish the reporter would’ve pressed the issue a bit more. Do lawsuits like the one GateHouse recently settled become legitimate? If any content from behind a pay wall is quoted in a free space, that would seem to me that monetary damages and a legal cause would follow. What would that do to information on the internet? How would the link economy be affected if users followed links only to be told they had to register and pay?

Don’t get me wrong, my passion for journalism will mean NOTHING if it can’t be monetarily supported. I don’t want to work for peanuts (or free) either.  But this seems to be an old-school idea to me. Maybe Kindle is working because it’s a significantly different format. Maybe we should try to think outside the scope of current operations to find a sustainable solution.