Saturday, February 20, 2021

Ideas related to paying for journalism.

Here is an interesting article that someone put in comments on one of my Facebook posts. It's about the issue of subscriptions and paywalls.

I've suggested a "pay by article system" as I can't subscribe to the hundreds of publications who's articles come up in my feeds.

Turns out that idea is called "micropayments" and it's been (being) tried. It has drawbacks as described here, but there are some other ideas, described in this article, that might work even better.

One idea, used by the Guardian from UK, is to have journalism content remain free, but invite readers to make a donation subscription. You choose the price.

Article didn't mention this, but that's how NPR Radio works. The content is free. It's on the air, but it's even free on the web, for the most part. Many NPR radio stations even archive content so one can listen at their convenience. One can back and search the archive for shows from even past years. Usually the topic is well described with a thumbnail photo.

I often post content from various NPR stations.

Some print publications, like the Guardian, use reader donation systems similar to NPR. That might be an idea that catches on more widely.

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