Running Out of Options

I've never paid for any content on the Internet, and I never intend to. Maybe it's because I'm a poor college student. Maybe it's because I have come to expect everything on the Internet to be free, but the minute I see that something costs money, I hit the back button on my browser and search for someone who will give me what I want. Free of charge, of course.

From news, to clip art, to PowerPoint templates, we expect to be able to type in our search and have the world at our fingertips. Why we expect to have this sort of convenience at no charge is something I can't understand, but I know the feeling is real. So, when I discovered that some guy named Craig had created a Web site that offered free classified advertising, I wasn't really surprised.

Apparently this was a shock, or maybe just a punch-in-the-gut to newspapers everywhere. Newspapers across the country are commissioning researchers to study the effects of Craigslist. Many people are downplaying the effects of Craigslist, saying that it is primitive in design and behind the times, but that does not seem to diminish its effects. One comment on the Poynter Institute Web site said, "The question is, if Craigslist is so primitive (and I agree that it is somewhat), why do people flock to it? Why is it so successful that newspapers are commissioning studies on it? Something to ponder."

Indeed. With all of the free options available, why would anyone choose to pay for anything? Grey Garvin, another contributor to the Poynter comment site seems to suggest that it's more than just the fact that it's free.

"Craig's list readers are cool...they have the same values...you feel like you're among friends on Craig's List," Garvin wrote. "A newspaper...why anyone could be there."

Maybe it has nothing to do with the cost. Maybe it has more to do with being different or being a trendsetter. The New York Times recently carved itself out as a trendsetter when it launched its TimesSelect subscription package. The new idea is to continue to offer the daily paper for free, but charge for the archives and the coveted New York Times Editorials.

What else are papers supposed to do? With Web sites like Craigslist taking away the last big revenue source available, the NYT had no choice. Steve Outing of Editor & Publisher put it well when he said, "As more readers -- especially younger people -- shift their reading habits to the Internet and move away from print, the digital side must bear more of the weight in paying the costs of the Times' journalism."

The online section of the Times is going to have to pull a lot more weight than it is now. According to the State of the News Media 2004 Annual Report on American Journalism said that the online portion of the Times only accounted for 1.7 percent of the total revenue. It looks as though they have a lot of catching up to do. Maybe TimesSelect will help that cause. Either way, I think we can expect to see more models like this popping up as newspapers try figure out how to survive in an online world.

Source: State of the News Media 2004