Posted on 04/20/2009 1:47:37 PM PDT by Lorianne
Alan Mutter spun a memorable catchphrase earlier this year when he called publishers' decision to distribute content on the Web for free their "Original Sin."
In Mutter's view, feeding the masses content at no charge for the last 15 years has helped to wreck their publishing business model. As he wrote in 2004, "If a newspaper gives away its costly and valuable product for free on the Internet, it may win friends and influence people in cyberspace, but it won't gladden the advertisers who pay the freight back here on Mother Earth."
If giving it away helped cast publishers out of the garden of profit, the man who has a plan to return the publishing industry to grace is Steve Brill. Brill, founder of the American Lawyer and Court TV, announced this week with partners Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery Jr. a plan to build efficient pay walls around publishers' content with their new company, Journalism Online. According to PaidContent.com's Staci D. Kramer, Journalism Online will release at least one e-commerce product by the fall.
Brill's strategy appears to be similar to those expressed in his November memo, Kramer adds, with micropayments for individual articles and all-day passes for a flat fee—as well as monthly and annual passes for publications that sign up with Journalism Online.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
The give away the news ~ they hope to catch advertising bucks from merchants and public pamphleteers.
That business model worked for centuries.
Recently the bottom fell out of the cost of advertising to vast numbers of people.
End of story.
He almost sounds as dumb as Sam Zell.
The model is broken. News hasn't been valuable since Cronkite started lying four decades ago.
The Internet has exposed the elite sham - you don't need that much talent to be successful. Look at all the outstanding work on Flickr, etc.
These guys are trilobites - dinosaurs think better.
please, please let them bet the farm on pay websites
Brill. Where in the hell has he been? Can we convince him to return to there?
Part II: I pay for the online WSJ. I used to have it delivered but it left such a mess.
He’ll be demoated.
Slate? How’s their business model working out for them?
They're ok so long as Bill Gates keeps on writing checks.
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