Micropayments: good if you are a monopoly

Reifman defends his approach by pointing to several successful models of payment for services, including iTunes, text messaging, TiVo, and broadband Internet. The first thing that leaped out at me is that three of those four things — iTunes, text messaging and broadband Internet — are a result of something approaching a monopoly (or an oligopoly or cartel, in the case of text messaging and broadband Internet). Apple can charge for music because it controls access to the songs from all the major record labels. Phone companies and cable companies can charge usurious rates for text messaging and Internet because they have little or no real competition. How does any of that apply to newspapers?

From the Nieman Journalism Review.

On building a new network

Just because you’ve started a network doesn’t mean everyone’s on the same page. “Networks are a new concept,” Van Slyke said. “You have to build those relationships. People still consider other organizations as competition for eyeballs or funds. You have to get over that into, ‘How do we work together for support of everyone?’”

Van Slyke said the Media Consortium members went through a long period of “dating” before they committed to making their collaboration official. Unlike the 30-plus investigative outlets who met at Pocantico last week and immediately inaugurated their network, the Media Consortium took several meetings to form, declaring its existence a year after their initial March 2005 meeting.

Tracy Van Slyke, who runs the Media Consortium. From an article in the Nieman Journalism lab.

"Cognitive cost" of spending...anything, even micro payments

Anderson borrows a term from George Washington economist Nick Szabo, labeling this flag the “mental transaction cost.” Laziness has made us all want to avoid making any decision, no matter how inconsequential. Even if something is financially affordable, once we begin to question if it’s “worth it,” we’ve already spent cognitive energy considering the decision, and will most likely choose not to spend the money, even if it’s just a penny. Anderson says micropayments “are destined to fail, Szabo concluded, because although they minimize the economic costs of choices, they still have all the cognitive costs…many potential customers would be put off by the payment and decision process.”

From Jessica Roy's review of Free for the Nieman Journalism Lab.

Guardian Crowdsourcing: those figures!

From Nieman Journalism Lab on The Guardian's crowdsourcing

Journalism has been crowdsourced before, but it’s the scale of the Guardian’s project — 170,000 documents reviewed in the first 80 hours, thanks to a visitor participation rate of 56 percent — that’s breathtaking. We wanted the details, so I rang up the developer, Simon Willison, for his tips about deadline-driven software, the future of public records requests, and how a well-placed mugshot can make a blacked-out PDF feel like a detective story.

He offered four big lessons:

And from Ethan Bauley - via my Tumblr: "This is the best article I’ve read in weeks."

Hard to disagree.

News on News: how do we keep the quality?

A few key points from Price Waterhouse Coopers Newspaper Outlook 2009. The issue here, as in so many industries, is what will consumers pay for? There's no doubt they will - if the content has enough value.

Although there is a huge potential for growth online, print
remains the largest source of revenue generation for
newspaper publishers, and will continue to be so for
some time.

Newspapers have a long-term future and will coexist with
other media. However this is unlikely to be either in the
formats or volumes seen today and there will some
casualties and losses of well-known papers along the
way.

Consumers place high value on the deep insight and
analysis provided by journalists over and above general
or breaking news stories.

Consumers see breaking news and general interest news
as commodities, but there is always a market for high
value online content in specific topics. Our consumer
research indicates that consumers are willing to pay for
this content, but newspapers need to develop strategies
for monetising their content and intellectual capital.

As the Nieman Journalism Lab noted:

PwC found that 62 percent of consumers are willing to pay for online news. But the report itself qualifies this finding as well:

This does not mean that they would actually buy online content at this amount however. Free content is abundant online and consumers would choose free content when the quality was comparable or sufficient for their purpose. On average, respondents expressed no willingness to pay for general news and background information on e-paper or mobile devices, and they do not see them as alternatives for full newspapers.

How Many Levels of 'Unknowns' does it take to make History?

Great blog on one of those Front Page of History Scenes that probably didn't happen...

Henry Morton Stanley pretended to have written something in his diary on November 23rd, 1871. Perhaps he did, though the pages in his diary are torn out, so we can’t know for sure. The event he claimed to have recorded — but probably didn’t — also probably didn’t happen, or at least not the way it’s usually “remembered.” He most likely didn’t say “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” on meeting the older doctor (Tim Jeal says so in his new biography), and he didn’t even meet him in the jungle at all. He met him in a town...

From the Edge of the American West blog.


And here is an interesting take on the above from the Nieman Journalism blog.

The value of unmediated information, direct from the source closest to the scene, versus the value of an older tradition that filters that information through the methods and mores of a profession? Substitute “those bloggers” for Stanley and “the mainstream media” for the Royal Geographic Society....

Is it just speed we're talking about...?