Would you pay to read your favorite newspaper online? Most say no, at least according to a new Harris poll.

With traditional print newspapers struggling to turn a profit, many have turned to the Web as a means to stay afloat. While some offer their online content free of charge, other papers have played around with subscriptions by charging readers a monthly fee. But that strategy may backfire, says a Harris poll released Wednesday.

via CNET via Journerdism

Pay for Newspapers Online?

I’d like to show you an interview with Julian Assange, the spokesperson of Wikileaks, that I conducted for my small student’s blog (I study journalism). On the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, a hacker event, I had the chance to talk with him, about the current economic and financial aspects of the website (at the moment it is shut down in order to generate money) and about the relationship of Wikileaks and mainstream media.

Stefan Mey - Leak-o-nomy: The Economy of Wikileaks

Some snippets from the interview:

How big is the core team of WikiLeaks?

There is probably five people that do it 24 hours a day. And then it’s 800 people who do it sometimes over a year. And in between there is a spectrum.

That sounds like the future of media to me.

My explanation was, that maybe they do it because they know that what you do is actually their job, but they don’t have the money to do it.

Maybe. The cost per word in investigative journalism is high. We make it a little bit cheaper for them. If you can bring these costs per word down you can get more words of investigative journalism and publish even in a company that wants to maximize profit. Because we do some of the expensive sourcing. And there is another really big cost, which is the threat of legal action. We take the most legally difficult part, which is not the story, but usually the backing documents. As a result there is less chance of legal action against the publisher. So we help them to bring their costs per word in investigative journalism down.

thoughts/reax?

Please Help with Cash

Poynter pointed out that the Miami Herald has begun asking readers for donations. I remember I did this in the beginning and the people didn’t like it very much at all. Some did donate, though. I imagine the Miami Herald should be able to drum up quite a bit more money with their audience. We shall see.

Karwath noted this was “the beginning of a conversation” about non-print subscribing, which I steered toward e-editions, digital replicas of print that are much more common than subscriptions to websites.

The Duluth paper, which was sold three years ago to the Fargo-based Forum chain, doesn’t offer an e-version. Karwath says the paper, formerly of Knight-Ridder, was looking at the Olive software platform, but the sale disrupted that process. The chain’s largest paper, the Fargo Forum, does have an e-edition.

wrote a Minn Post blogger

I dunno. Just shows how clueless old media still is? Olive software platform?? Rolls eyes. Come on, now.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out. I think the people (at least some of them) will want to donate to help out. It could start a backlash, however, because a lot of people are still very upset with big media.

Your thoughts?