Old Media’s Return To Charging Will Lead To Boom For PSFK & Co

Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times has said that he expects that most newspaper media will likely return to charging web-users after a long stint of offering their content for free online. He expects much of this to happen in the next 12 months arguing that it a possible way that good journalism can not only survive but thrive in the digital age. He also dismisses blogging as a future form of news journalism saying that it is based on rumor and opinion rather than news and fact.

PSFK argues that Barber has got it wrong and that he and any newspaper that might be considering such a move underestimate the power of the blogs. While there is a significant proportion of ‘blogs’ and other social media outlets that do thrive on rumor, gossip and opinion there are a lot of other sites that are popular because they have become important sources of (often niche) news. At least 7 of the top 10 blogs are news publications – it makes you wonder whether Barber even reads blogs.

A reader spoke to me at a gathering in New York earlier this week and said to me that she had cut the number of blog and tweets she read because PSFK’s Twitter feed covered a lot of her daily news needs. I responded to say that her activity was something we were hoping more of our readers develop over the next year. I explained to her that we have a plan to be seen as the “Economist magazine of ideas” – a place you can go and trust that we cover all the relevant news on our beat seasoned with a point of view – just like the Economist magazine of business. That would mean that our readers wouldn’t need to read as many newspapers, magazines, blogs and feeds because they would trust that PSFK would cover everything important when it came to new ideas.

We are, of course, not close to achieving that yet – but I can’t imagine that the return of pay-walls will hinder our business – nor the habits of our readers. Slow to respond, old media let the horse bolt long ago. Our readers value the aggregation of old-media stories we do on their behalf and so we will simply pay for subscriptions to those titles and continue to publish excerpts and comments for free. That should mean a boom in our traffic as readers avoid paying to subscribe to various publications.

Of course we are small fish but old media with paywalls will have to compete with larger competition. The Huffington Post is a serious news player that is investing in news journalism that will rival old-media’s traditional output – and the world wide web allows access to public funded free news sites such as the BBC.

Sure, there will be some examples where PayWall media will work – but this will only be in the niches where there is less competition and greater difficulty to access news.