dan gillmor makes some interesting comments on the long-term effects of free media, particularly on how it’s affected the newpaper industry thus far.
i’ve been mulling over this a bit. in the net environment, it’s hard, and most likely counterproductive to try to control the bits, whereas previously, controlling distribution was the most logical way to do it. but if you think about it, if someone wanted to, they could have taped / photocopied, hand transcribed a copy if they wanted to, it was just a pain in the butt. hmm, is this going anywhere? anyway, since people don’t feel it’s worth paying for news, what are the options (for monetizing): advertising supported model (journalistic integrity gets blurred if this is the only revenue stream), wait for micropayments and hope something works out (people are too used to getting free stuff, and it will flow as long as the large competition has money to burn), or offer a non-piratable value add. the last one involves offering a service, which can be controlled easier server-side. as long as it’s sufficiently convenient, people will use, enjoy and pay for it.
so, my theory is that people may not pay for news, but people probably would pay for personalized service, like aggregation, searching, possibly even community features, umm. maybe