This week, L. Gordon Crovitz of The Wall Street Journal wrote the opinion piece, ” Information Wants to Be Expensive: Newspapers need to act like they’re worth something.”
Courtesy of online.wsj.com
For years, Crovitz wrote, publishers and editors have asked the wrong question: Will people pay to access my newspaper content on the Web? The right question is: What kind of journalism can my staff produce that is different and valuable enough that people will pay for it online?
I’m interested in hearing what folks think of this essay. I’m not sure I agree with everything Mr. Crovitz writes. Haven’t most newspapers always been trying “valuable” content?
If independent writers in Northfield produced content that you valued more than that of a reporter employed by a company, would you be wiling to pay for that independent reporter to keep up his or her news beat?
The only thing that would make news more valuable to me is it’s relatability to my life/needs/interest. I might pay for a specific article, but not a subscription to a beat that might cover similar news found in articles of an established paper that I would consider reliable.