Paper view. Is charging for news content the way forward?

Pressing times ahead for the traditional newspaper format.

There was a certain inevitability about the announcement that, from June 2010, News International (NI) will start charging for access to The Times and Sunday Times newspapers.

But has this decision been made out of sheer commercial necessity and would you pay for your daily news?

The answer to the first question is almost certainly yes.

Almost without exception, sales of national daily and Sunday newspapers have suffered a considerable decline in circulation in recent years and media companies are now looking hard at ways to generate revenue from their websites.

ABC figures show that, in February 2010, the most popular titles have almost all reported a year-on-year decline in sales with some actually in double digits.

In commercial terms, this is comparable to money being transported to a cliff edge and unless there is a seismic turnaround in fortune for these titles – which seems unlikely – these papers are operating an unsustainable business model so they really have no option but to act.

But this situation has been a long time coming. Unless you’ve been living on the moon for the last decade, it’s been fairly evident that there are other alternatives out there for keeping abreast of the news. And, there are a truck load of reasons why they are better.

First off, it’s free. Yep. All you need is an on-line connection and bingo. As much news as you can cram into your head with most of it of a very high standard such as that from professional ‘bloggers.

Who reads yesterday’s papers?

Secondly, the immediacy of on-line content is unsurpassed. Anyone who picks up a printed newspaper is effectively reading yesterday’s news. To illustrate the point, take the remarkable story of the pilot who landed a US commercial airliner in New York’s Hudson River in January 2009.

It has been widely documented that an observer took a photo of the incident on his phone and sent the image to a friend in Australia. The image was subsequently posted and distributed on social networking sites within minutes… in fact so quickly that it happened before an American news network could even get to the scene. So what chance the New York press?

This scenario also polarises the whole issue of the source of news. Historically, newswires and press agencies syndicated news to the hacks and the stories were typed up and published. This method has now been pretty much turned on its head with many journos now routinely scouring the web for breaking stories.

This sums up the size of the challenge facing the modern newspaper owner and Rupert Murdoch’s News International is acutely aware of the situation.

So this brings us round to the thorny question of would you pay for syndicated news?

Well, personally, no. I’m an avid consumer of all types of news including current affairs and I have to say that I’ve kind of got used to getting access to good quality journalism for free so it’ll come as a bit of a shock to my system to have to fork out for it despite the levy being touted as quite reasonable at £1 per day or £2 per week.

Add to that, the strong possibility that I’ll almost certainly be able to find what I want from other sources quite easily for which there’ll be no fee attached.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that, for the long-term survival of the mainstream daily newspapers, they’ll need to appeal to a generation of news consumers who, according to many polls, don’t even want to pay for their music – let alone news.

These are testing times indeed for a traditional industry that simply has to act to survive and it appears to be making its first move.

Whether it’ll be successful is an entirely different matter and News International will be watched very carefully indeed.

But would you pay for your news? Do you, or have you considered charging for your own on-line content? Tell us what you think.