Sure, I’m up for a whinge.
Fairfax and News announce they’ll charge for online content and the entire ecosystem of Douche 2.0s proceeds to crow happily about the death of “heritage” media, while updating their poorly designed, poorly edited, $2.50/month-on-Adsense blogs. Whoopee for “citizen journalism.”
Apparently there’s some interest in a two tier thing:
Fairfax was looking at a number of pay models, including offering readers two levels of access - free entry for a mass audience, with a charge for ”more upmarket, high quality data”.
Data, by which you mean… what? Upmarket, also?
Mr McCarthy said a two-level scheme could work for Fairfax’s new national online news, commentary and analysis site, nationaltimes.com.au, to be launched next month, initially free.
What’s “more upmarket?” Am I supposed to pay for looking at past reviews of bar and restaurant reviews? Do I get pop from The Vine for free, but then have to pay for the thoughtful relevance of the opinions and letters?
”We have a monetisation challenge,” said Mr McCarthy. ”We’re certainly getting the [online] traffic. We’re getting the advertising, but it’s not a user-paid model in terms of the reader.”
Point the first, here’s your monetisation challenge: How about I buy the Age in paper form, and ignore the ads there too?
Point the second, what happens if all the decent reporting is locked away behind paywalls? Are we going to be stuck with amateur “citizen journalists” repeating rumours they heard on Twitter?
Don’t whinge and say “well mainstream media sux too omg,” because a decent journo with a quality bullshit filter still beats some pimply-faced yoof’s two-minute brainfarts on YouTube any day of the week. And sure, there’s some good indie reporting going on, but it’s damn hard to find in amongst all the faffing about over whether Lady Gaga has a penis.
