Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Micropayments will save the newspaper industry...

... won't they?




Errr, maybe not!
But that won't stop Walter Isaacson (yup, the ex-CEO of CNN and one-time editor if TIME magazine) saying on The Daily Show that newspapers made a mistake by initially putting everything on the Internet for free and and asking questions such as:

"Who's going to send people to Baghdad if always everything in journalism is free?"
A few points, if I may:


  1. Journalism isn't free (its product is just given away for free by the likes of Google)

  2. Once you've started giving stuff away for free, its incredibly difficult to then start charging (even small amounts) for it

  3. Please don't 'save your newspaper' if you can't provide a compelling reason for doing so

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