On hearing the news this morning that The Economist is to charge for news content across its site I was wondering why they waited so long.The Economist is a natural for paid content in the same way that the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times are. They are likely to end up being select members of a very small paid content club. With the power of the distinctive Economist brand and loyal readership (talking of, which check Campaign's "How the Economist changed tack to attract new readers"), I think it can successfully leverage the kind of analysis and insight it offers in to a paid content model.
The Economist.com website currently gives away its news and charges for its archive in the way that the New York Times once did. I'm betting that was not a huge money spinner.Yvonne Ossman, publisher of The Economist, who confirmed the move to Media Week says they looked at a number of payment options, including an iTunes-style micropayment model. It's going to be interesting to see how this works and how quickly they get it going.She also says that she's not "sure others will follow suit". She's right about that, of course, as mostly newspapers can't charge as much as some might like.The most interesting development around at the moment for newspapers seems to be the club idea that The Guardian, The New York Times and others are exploring. The idea seems to be gaining ground. Steve Outing has a blog post on how Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly (yes he of much right-wing Republican nuttiness) and his team have created something called the BillOreilly.com Premium Membership package (there are 16 reasons to become a member, apparently). While the website for his show 'The O'Reilly Factor' is mostly free, he is now offering more for serious O’Reilly fans. Some of those people are very serious -- although shouldn't always be taken as such. O'Reilly and his people are serious as well as -- he's charging $49.95 a year or $4.95 a month (must be why there are 16 reasons to sign up).As Outing says, "this is exactly the model that many newspaper and magazine publishers have been talking about lately, though many are having trouble figuring out what they’ve got that they can charge for".Would love to write more, but boy am I suffering from a double whammy: right finger recovering from dislocation and now struck by man flu (I don't think its swine flu, but don't get too close).
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Gordon Macmillan
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