Let’s not fool ourselves – news doesn’t have a ‘value’

Once more the inane argument about whether newspapers should be charging for their online content has reared its ugly head with the same old arguments and the same old people throwing in their two cents worth. As usual the dividing line has been drawn with the typical reactionary attitudes on both sides of the fence spouting out their partisan viewpoints.

The idea that sparked this latest debate was that newspapers should look into the utilizing micropayments as a way of making money from the news. This of course followed the previous idea of bringing back subscriptions which went over like a lead balloon but it did give those suggesting it plenty of pageviews in the process. The problem is though that all this talk about newspapers being able to rescue themselves from oblivion is based on the faulty notion that news is worth money.

Newspapers cling to this belief because not doing so would invalidate their reason for being in the first place. Maybe at one time – say the 1800’s to early 1900’s – this may have been the case, but ever since the 1950’s onward news isn’t what made the newspaper business rich. From that point in time onward news was only that which could fit around the advertising because that is what brought in the money not the news. Sure they had subscriptions but if anyone in the newspaper business tells you that subscriptions was what paid all the salaries of all the reporters, journalist and editors they are lying.

Subscriptions were lost leaders just as was the pennies you paid at the newsstand, used to be able to offer seemingly cheap special subscription drives whose only purpose was to get more advertising in front of more people. It definitely wasn’t to get the news in front of more people because news in of itself isn’t a money maker, it is just a vehicle by which the newspapers could get more advertising out there. After all newspaper; and magazine, advertising rates are based on circulation not on news value. The higher the circulation the more money they make.

So let’s stop fooling ourselves here. News has no intrinsic value, you cannot put dollars and cents on what any news item. You can however put a value on the advertising that goes around the news. Which was fine when you were dealing with a captive audience that had limited ways to keep up with what is happening in the world but the moment you remove barriers to access of information (news) then you are no longer dealing with a captive audience.

The idea that people will pay for added value is very true as we have seen the model work in other areas but to think that people will pay for news that has no added value is ridiculous. News is news – there is no way you can pretty it up or any other value to it. To suggest that putting it back behind a subscription wall or a micropayment scheme only show how you are fooling yourself.

News – both online and offline – has always been advertising supported and any newspaper person who is facetious enough to suggest otherwise is only fooling themselves. The rest of us have seen through the joke.