PressEthic

Media bloggers rely on referencing online newspaper content to fuel discussion. However is it possible that going forward all newspapers could duck behind subscription walls making it extremely difficult to facilitate online debate.

Currently there seem to be two prevailing models for online newspaper viewing.

Firstly there are those papers that offer their content completely free, for instance The Guardian and The New Zealand Herald. All their content (both current and archived) is available without subscription.

Other newspapers like The Sydney Morning Herald and The New York Times offer current news for free (articles usually stay free for about a week) and then require you to subscribe to access archived content.

Obviously the second option is more problematic for bloggers. Sites, like the NY Times, do offer some relief for bloggers by allowing them to generate a link to current news stories which will exist beyond the 7-day-window for free content. This is not much help if one wishes to link to archived news.

It seems likely that this trend towards to archiving old news stories will continue, especially in competitive newspaper markets. On a recent trip to New Zealand, Sir Arthur O’Rielly (the Irish media baron) pointedly argued that newspapers should not give their content away for free as he did not see online advertising as a profitable for newspapers.

Listner columnist Russel Brown counters O’Reilly’s argument by noting that the New Zealand Herald allows free access to its archives and turns a profit from its online advertising. The Herald itself claims that this profitability is partly driven by the traffic that blogs and Google news deliver. What Brown’s column doesn’t explicitly state is that the New Zealand Herald is the country’s most reputed newspaper doing business in a relatively small market. As a big fish in a small pond, it’s not surprising The Herald can generate significant revenue through online ads, relative to those papers in intensely competitive markets.

The current financial problems facing newspapers in their print form are intractable, forcing a re-think of their business models. The Washington Post reported, that for the 6 month period ending March 31 2005, circulation at the 814 largest US dailies declined 1.9%. The article attributed this decline to 24 hour cable news and the internet. Newspapers may simply be faced with the commercial reality that they will have to seek alternative ways to generate revenue, as their traditional methods become obsolete.

As newspaper sales fall, and alternate sources of news become more popular, it would not come as any great surprise if newspapers increasingly charged for online content. This could well make the blogger’s mission that little bit more difficult.