At D7 today, Kara Swisher sat down with Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington and Washington Post’s Digital Chief Katharine Weymouth to discuss a topic that has been beaten to death: old vs. new media. Much of the interview was spent massaging each other’s egos, with each praising the other for the quality of their respective publication’s journalism.
But Huffington spiced things up when Swisher broached the issue of monetization. Huffington denied that HuffPo would ever consider subscriptions, saying “We absolutely never imagine subscriptions. Unless you’re selling porn, and especially “very weird porn”, you shouldn’t sell subscriptions.” Swisher cited a Penn Schoen & Berland survey that found that 5% of people would pay for blogs and 92% of people don’t pay for online content today.
Subscriptions for news are a controversial subject to say the least. Rupert Murdoch said recently that News Corp. would start charging for access to many of its newspaper’s websites, citing the success of News Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal’s subscription model. News Corp. owns and operates over 110 newspapers worldwide.
Today, GigaOm announced GigaOm Pro, a subscription service for research and analysis created by analysts. Content includes briefings, notes, long views written by editorial team, quarterly wrap-ups, weekly updates on news, and curated links.
To hell with huffington, but that pic with the kleenex had me rolling. i wish i had the creative instinct to do that sort of stuff.
Tech Crunch: Serious revenue stream available by selling a poster sized version of the “Porn…it’s cheaper than dating” graphic. Could be on the wall of every freshman male’s dorm by the fall!
That’s not their graphic though. there’s a company that produces posters, t-shirts, wallpapers, etc with slogans like that
The other revenue option would be to have a fake marriage and win lots of money in alimony to spend on a news website. Gotta love the gold diggers!
Yeah, of course nobody would pay for HuffPo. It’s shitty. With the death of the newspapers comes the death of real journalism.
Are you sure you don’t mean,” With the death of an Editor comes the success of real[time] (online) journalism”?
Newspapers are the same as News on the TV – It’s all about ratings/sales not important information!
Not saying you’re wrong, because yeah, “real journalism” can and hopefully will continue to exist outside of newspapers, but he’s got a point in that HuffPo is pretty terrible.
“real journalism” isn’t what they do – the entire site is either links to newspapers or editorial/opinion pieces, a good number of which are total garbage.
Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t referring to HuffPo as I have never visited their website. I was just commenting on the idea that the internet could never be a place of “real” journalism as that journalist/news source has a connection to the whole world. A website doesn’t have the overhead that a Newspaper has and the content doesn’t necessarily have the censorship responsibility.
It’s still the “wild wild west” for the internet but once they get a lot of the kinks worked out(revenue,etc) then people will have more of a reminiscent moment when thinking about news on paper as opposed to a feeling of loss…
Whenever I pick up a decent newspaper, I tend to find the quality better than most blogs. I think a lot of people would agree that newspapers are better for investigative jounrnalism, rather than rumours flying around Twitter. A decent media is an essential component of civil society, so I hope the newspapers get their act together soon.
“Whenever I pick up a decent newspaper”
Please name one, and the reason you believe it is “decent”
Thanks!
TechCrunch Pro
While I agree with her on charging for general news stuff, subscriptions do work for sites other than porn — like ours!
We’re a niche sports site that covers the University of Florida Gators and have over 5,000 subscribers and growing even in this economy.
It’s all about serving up what your audience is hungry for…
Ray
Ray,
Very impressive that you are seeing growth right now with subscribers. Keep up the good work.
Personally, I think subscribers only work for niches with very high quality information. They don’t work for general news sites.
True enough and it’s not easy. It is a of work and you have to continually pump out unique, quality content that folks are willing to pay for and this is key — can’t get anywhere else.
Thanks,
Ray
Raymond, that is fantastic. We’re a niche content provider as well, trying to figure out what direction to go. Your comment is encouraging. What do you cover that people are willing to pay for regarding the Gators? Look forward to hearing your reply.
AJ
If you provide more value to your members than simple article updates then subscription based site can be viable.
As of right now simple information is ingrained in us to be free, need to go beyond that and provide tools, videos, bonuses etc.
Remember the 5th power : journalism, well, that power is coming back to the people! No more a bunch of people deciding what we should see and read on our behalf! great! long live online news!
Newspapers and magazines are too slow and lack any interactivity. And cost money. Free is much better. When Steve Ballmer said print media would be dead in 10 years, I could not believe such a thing. But now I do.
Setting individual political foulness of previous comments aside, Huffington is totally spot on with her take on it. Just because there’s niche market opportunity for some news, the vast majority is not going to pay for it online like they do to read the pulp out there. Either old media gets that or they’ll become as relevant as horse and buggy manufacturers did and as GM is now.
People just don’t get it. When the marginal cost of your item is zero, you *maximize* distribution. Charging for subscriptions does the opposite.
GatorCountry is a perfect example. It’s reaching a tiny fraction of its potential readership.
I have to say good for Om. He always strikes me as a keen forward thinker so I think he’ll do well with the subscriptions.
I know micro-payments aren’t popular either, but they seem like a better method than a straight up subscription model. Best would be that sites restrict the number of ads served and create value for the few that remain.
Did anyone else have a “flashback from the future” moment where you saw an article quoting that anti-subscription quote the day Huffington does go to a subscription based approach? On the web, never say never. Ever. Not even to someone handing you a box of tissues.
Interesting that Ariana would mention porn.
The HuffPost is just as bad as any porn site – a low quality site regurgitating the same old material to try to stir some arousal/sensation.
Good bye professionalism journalism – it was nice knowing you…
Yeah.
Since when Huffington is “a journalist” – I thought that good command of the language is a basic requirement for a journalist [duh!].
Huffington assassinates the English language every time she opens her mouth.
Porn: Arianna Huffington’s 15 minutes of fame ended when George Bush’s second term ended. Just sayin’.
Arianna’s worry is that if newspaper’s do put their best stuff behind a paywall, huffpost will eventually have to pay its writers to come up with some original reporting. Can’t have that now.
Arianna Huffington is completely wrong. I am the VP of New Media at Digital Playground. We have multiple subscription sites that have couple-oriented ‘normal’ adult content. Our movie Pirates II Stagnetti’s Revenge is the best selling adult movie of all time and is available at Blockbuster, NetFlix, Amazon etc. We anticipate our biggest year ever online providing subscriptions to over 1/4 million users. People will ALWAYS pay for high quality, exclusive content. I would bet it’s Ms. Huffington who’s surfing for free ‘weird’ porn.
In most cases the adult industry was on top of all markets.
Ummmmm….. ……would someone please direct me to the ‘weird porn?’ Thank you and good day.
gimme a fiver and I’ll show you my feet…
Of course 92% of people don’t pay for access to media because all the publishers are giving it away free. It’s self-fulfilling. The reason that editorial products are in the midst of a disastrous cycle is that the bill is finally coming due for all the free models. You don’t walk into a restaurant and expect free food, why should all content be free? There aren’t enough advertising dollars to support even close to all the sites that are using it as a revenue model.
The only reason that people expect free content is that publishers were too short term focused to see where the market is going. Some free content will survive but the market is moving back towards subscription models despite Huffington’s “expert” opinion.
If you love a site but aren’t willing to pay even a small fee for it, you don’t love it that much. Huffington’s bloggers are atrocious (and I’m a Democrat), and both her and Drudge will be SOL if papers start charging.
pls sent subscription