As I seemed to oppose the rest in terms of value delivered by the paid content, I had to come up with the key points as I saw them.
1. Availability. The information is made available first to the readers who have subscribed to the content provider. Good examples would be sources like Reuters, Bloomberg, FT as those provide up to minute information that can give leading edge to the players in the stock market. Once the information is released to the "public domain", for the subscribers it is already "old, irrelevant and unusable" as it has become a common knowledge.
2. Validity. Information provided as a paid content (sometimes very expensive indeed) is most probably to be more valuable as it is valid. It comes usually from the trustworthy sources and and both the commentators and the publishers are not widely known for risking their reputation for the questionable news. Occasional lapses of quality control are more or less tolerable, until these are not too frequent.
3. Actual content versus advertising. I do like to read magazines that belong to a publisher who uses the following business model - free content paid by advertising and (nearly) ad-free paid quality content. Way too often I open a magazine that is a real page-turner. Unfortunately for the overwhelming amount of advertising, not for interesting or insightful articles.
A good example here is IDG Network. I read both Computer World and CIO. First is free and helped along by advertising (about 60% of content) where the second is paid content, that has a tiny proportion of advertising and is a rather more interesting read. That again depends on the focus group - if the Computer World is the only source for IT news, it is not too bad. For the readers who keep themselves up to date with tech-world by following blogs, twitter feeds and personal view articles, it is yesterday by the time it is published.
I prefer not to pay for the news, views and analysis, but in many cases it seems to be the only way. The model I have followed for last couple of years has been to read engadget daily either with Google Reader or iPhone and then read Computer World online edition (as PDF) and CIO on my leisure. Again, former is free, latter payable.
During the discussion I was asked why would anyone pay for anything that is available in the web anyway. My answer was - why would you pay for that Sun on your desk? It is latest gossip and in no way something that could be classified as a quality newspaper. Evening Standard is the same news, but free. Same amount of advertising, not available until lunch time. Metro in the morning and Lite in the evening - should you live in or commuting to London and City A.M. should you land near the Bank.
Want more? Well, then there is The Daily Telegraph - want it free (selection of news, though) - read on the web or in your iPhone. Want it on paper, pick it up from Boots as an unfortunate by-product to a bottle of water - all the joy for just £1.
Listening to Peter Day from BBC discussing on the topic of paid content the other day and it become quite clear that publishers had followed the idea or movement, if you like, of information freedom. What they did miss was the second part of the thesis - information can also earn you money. It would be highly advisable to listen to anyone who has doubts over reasoning behind paid online content.
To conclude the topic (hah!) I would like to see more initiatives where a quality newspaper or magazine (online or printed) does contain no more than 10% advertising and is priced accordingly. Publishers need to find a way to balance between the quality of content and means of generating income for the shareholders.
Your views are welcome. Just leave them as comments or wrap it up, slap it on the back and send to taavisepp78 [at] gmail dot com.
