Ninemsn content boss Hal Crawford has suggested that paywalls in the mainstream Australian press are doomed to failure and that publishers need to think outside the subscription model.
Crawford, editor in chief at Ninemsn, suggested that paywalls are a barrier to scale which publishers in Australia cannot afford and that legacy publishers have to face facts.
“Companies are saying, 'There must be a way of supporting our cost base.' Well, that's not the way the world works. The world does not exist to support any newsroom.”
Crawford said that he could not tell “heritage” newspapers how to run their businesses. But he suggested that the old paper giants were “doomed” if they could not solve “cultural problems” residing not at management level, but “quite deep” within the newsroom.
Fairfax and News Corp might argue that they are pursuing a hybrid approach, using metered models on mainstream mastheads and paywalls on more specialist news, such as AFR.com.au. They might also argue that the Ninemsn does not have the editorial resources to produce high-quality original news.
Crawford though suggested it was all about numbers. While both Fairfax and News have suggested that they are hitting subscriber targets without a drop off in web traffic, Crawford said that any barriers for users “created friction”. Friction was “a pain in the arse ... In Australia you need scale”.
Paywalls for niche titles were viable, he said. Whether the newspaper barons could turn their product into a selection of verticals under paywalls was a “fascinating idea” said Crawford, but he questioned whether they had the resources to do it.
With the rise of consumption of news on mobile devices, and people's familiarity with paying for data allowances through their monthly subscription, could not newspapers, particularly those with existing business ties to telcos, try micro-payments?
Crawford said newspapers should be “experimenting”. However, he questioned whether micro-payments would “work psychologically for audiences”. He suggested that even at a few cents per article, capped at the cost of a digital subscription, they might be akin to “a premium-rate party line” in the minds of customers.
“[I am] not ideologically opposed to paywalls, only where they are impractical. I don't think they are practical in Australia.”
Crawford said that there was room for “serious and light” news in the same bundle and that “the kind of content that is acceptable to run side by side has changed”. However, he would not be drawn on how big a newsroom Ninemsn would need to deliver both hard news and content aggregation.
News Corp declined to comment, Fairfax said that it used a metered model and did not have a paywall on its mainstream products.
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