There are many predictions about for 2010 and one of them is that publishers are all going to at least experiment with putting some of their content behind a paywall over the course of next year. Rupert Murdoch has been the most vociferous about this, but many other publishers are looking at similar models. I have already commented about how I don’t believe Murdoch’s ploy will work, but then it is no secret to anyone who knows me that I really don’t regard any of the ‘journalism’ (I use the term incredibly loosely) in The Sun as ‘quality’ and I have serious doubts about the rest of the rather biased Murdoch press (and I make no apologies for that view). So I for one won’t pay.
However…
There is a lot of utter rubbish on the internet. I don’t think any of us can deny that the user generated content movement has been a good thing and a bad thing at the same time. It has been good because it has given everyone a voice, but it has been bad in that some of those voices perhaps ought not have been offered the platform. As an advocate of free speech, I won’t deny anyone the right to speak. But I reserve the right to ignore it if it isn’t well written, well thought out or well argued. We all have to filter as there is far too much information available for any single person to possibly take in. And I try and filter by quality.
The irony is, in doing so I actually pay. That is because I regard things like Prospect Magazine and The London Review of Books as quality, and in order to access their online archives, I subscribe to the paper magazine. I also subscribe to Skeptic Magazine and Scientific American as I rate both of them highly. As such, I pay out fees every year to receive what I regard as quality writing. So if they all went purely online, would I pay?
See, there’s a dilemma and I am afraid I am going to have to contradict myself from a previous blog post having spent a lot of time thinking about it. Yes. I would continue to pay for these publications. I won’t pay for ‘newspapers’ online as I don’t like reading them offline, but for the information which I trust to provide me a less biased and far less sensational view of the world I would continue to open my wallet.
My biggest problem is I still prefer my quiet reading time to be spent with paper and print. My eyes get tired from reading for too long on a screen and I find there are just too many distractions when you have a browser opened. I may, of course, be forced to change in the future and as such, I will find myself paying my subscription for online content. So be it.
2010 is going to be an interesting year for the internet. I think the halcyon days of everything free and everyone giving everything away to anyone who wants it are coming to an end and things will fall back into balance. In this new world, some of the existing publications will succeed, and others will fail. And until I am proven otherwise, I will retain my idealistic view that quality will prevail.
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