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Five Ways to My Wallet: Yes, I MIGHT Pay...Jan 14 '02 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line News on the web would be worth paying for if it gave us new capabilities, didn't take away old capabilities, was friendly, useful, and affordable. Here's what I want...
What could I possibly add to this discussion -- a topic that has been online for more than two years and that already has about 100 reviews? What insight could I possibly bring to the table?? Well, how about being the guy who would pay... If you read those 100 previous reviews, you'd see that 99 percent of epinions users essentially say "no way will I pay for online news". Well, I would -- at least I would if somebody put an online news server together that was worth paying for. It's a tall order. The site would need to offer me a reason to prefer it over a hardcopy, or more precisely, five reasons to prefer it. Features That Might Make Me Pony Up the Bucks Here are the five things that, if well done, could make me (one of the world's truly cheap people) actually reach for my wallet... 1. Deep News The number one reason why I am often dissatisfied with print newspapers is because they don't carry enough news. They don't dig for the hard stories. They don't do enough analysis. Most newspapers in the United States today are not worth reading. They are formulaic publications that lack genuine professional reporters and editors, instead relying on wire feeds and "editors" who follow orders handed down from the corporate boardroom. Every newspaper owned by the Hearst Corporation or Knight-Ridder is useless when it comes to news -- every one -- including the sorry excuse for a newspaper that serves my own hometown. How I yearn for the days of professional independent newspapers... I would pay money to read stories that really dig for the hard news stories. I'm tired of "reporters" who accept every government statement and corporate press release as gospel truth. Whatever happened to reporters who dig behind the stories to figure out who pulled what strings to make things happen? Is there any impropriety behind Bush's ties to Enron? Dig! Don't just print yet another denial. Dig! Am I the only person in America who is wondering what else has been happening in the world over the past 2-3 months other than the U.S. attacking the Taliban? Sure that's a newsworthy story and deserves to be covered, but not to the exclusion of everything else in the world... Have you heard anything new about world trade treaty negotiations? Me neither. Of course huge world corporations like having their efforts to run roughshod over environmental and labor laws kept out of the public eye, but that's all the more reason for the news to dig. Have you heard anything about rebels in Columbia lately? Me neither -- just a one-paragraph blurb under "world highlights" in the Sunday paper. Somehow I doubt the rebels have just disappearred, though they've certainly disappeared from my local paper... Have you heard about power struggles in Zimbabwe? I heard a snippet on NPR the other day, but sure didn't see anything in my daily paper... Have you heard any analysis about the economy lately? In-depth analysis of problems at U.S. airports? Nope, just the same old "grin and bear it" pieces that whitewash problems and avoid pointing fingers...no depth. For every story in my morning newspaper, there are probably 10 others that I would rather read than the predictable wire feeds chosen by the corporate "editor". Give me those 10 stories and I'll pay up... 2. International Perspective I don't like the poor coverage of international events that most U.S. corporate newspapers pass off to their readers. I don't like that most papers can't devote more than a single page to international happenings. I don't like seeing a trivial front-page story about warm weather in Mississippi when page 40 carries a 2-paragraph "article" that actually touches on important issues, like starvation in Africa, or rebels in Sri Lanka, or treaty negotiations between China and Taiwan. I want a "lifestyles" section that ignores U.S. pop stars and soap opera stars for a change and instead covers interesting people doing serious art. I want to read about the artists of the "new" China. I want to read about latin music stars who sing powerful songs about the human condition -- not ditzy sappy teen pablum about a virgin's boyfriend. I want to read about royalty from Nepal -- not yet another stupid article about the life of Britain's inconsequential royalty. It would be really great if I could somehow see top stories from each country that I care about. I'd like to see extensive daily coverage of Columbia -- which utterly fascinates me these days, and I'd like to see daily coverage of the top stories in Mexico, China (which is probably the nation to watch for the next couple decades), Spain, Russia, South Africa, or whereever else my curiosity takes me today. I'd really like to be able to read stories in languages other than english, written by reporters who are not Americans. That's really the only way to gain a true world perspective. In my perfect online news site, language translation filters would also be available on every single article so I could read the site using the language I want to use. (It would also be nice if the translation filter really worked, but that's another can of worms.) If a news site ever offerred me a really deep, truly international perspective on the news, I'd pay money for it... 3. Archive Search I often want to look up things in back issues. I might see a story today that triggers my memory of something that happened last month, or last year. I'd like to be able to search the archive and find that previous article. If I'm thinking of investing big-time in a company, I'd kind of like to read everything that the business section ever printed about the company. When I travel somewhere, I'd like to be able to call up city profiles that might have shown up two or three years ago. There are a lot of times when I use archive search features. I'd use them even more if they were well-implemented, reliably found pertinent material, and searched a true archive of everything the paper ever printed plus wire stories plus related archives, etc. If a site did all that, I might pay money to use it... 4. User-Friendly Implementation I've visited quite a few news sites on the web and there are few things that irk me more than sites that are user hostile. It's not just a question of interface and navigation either, although that's certainly important. It's mostly a question of how the site is implemented and what policies are behind the site from a management perspective. Things that tick me off include: 1) unpredictable URLs that can't be bookmarked, 2) articles that disappear, 3) non-printable articles, 4) registration on any "free" site, 5) flash, 6) splash pages, 7) slow load times, 8) non-standard file formats, 9) java or active-x scripts that fail on any platform under any condition, 10) anything platform or browser specific. I'm sure you probably have your own list of gripes, but in my opinion, these are the kinds of things that tell me a site just doesn't care about making information truly useful to the users. If a site was truly obsessed with making the user the center of their world and making information truly usable in whatever way the user could conceive, then yes, I just might pay... 5. Affordable I'm a picky guy and I have a very, very long wish list. I know it. But even though I want a lot of things, I don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg to get it. I want my cake and I want to eat it too. Yes, I might pay....but not if the price is wrong. Pay the Piper? For me, the question of whether or not to pay for online news is easy: as long as there's not significant value in online news services over and above the advantages of traditional print newspapers, I won't pay a penny to read online. But if somebody created an online news service that offerred incredible improvements over picking up a paper at the newsstand in the morning, then yes, I would pay...but only if...  |
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