"But what happens if it turns out that an insufficient minority are willing to pay for content to make businesses like the NYT and other publishers viable businesses (or at least viable at their current scale in their current incarnation)?"
I think about it slightly differently. If you ask the question "Will all the news organizations and publishers go out of business?" And the answer is obvious, no they won't.
The reason they won't is because there is a demand for content and the only people left standing will be the ones who can deliver content in a way that pays their own bills. Will the NYTimes go out of business? Perhaps.
This is the fallacy in a nutshell : "My current thinking is that if they were to stop writing, people would just get their news from elsewhere, and other publishers would gladly fill their shoes."
Nobody will commit finanical suicide to serve a market. They have to believe that there is a way to make money at it, so the only way "other publishers" jump into the market is if they can do so without losing their shirts.
What we're observing is the death of the "put up some content and slap some ads on it" way of making money. That it has worked this long has been very impressive as there is very little barrier to entry, but the commons is so thoroughly stomped upon with blog spam and content farms is finally killing it. Having service providers listen to their users and allow them to disable ads, puts the final nail in that coffin. Is it no wonder they scream loudly?
The vote is being called as they say, "Either put up with ads, or pay for your content."
The challenge though is how to negotiate what the content is worth? How do you make a market so that people can actually implement that choice over a wide range of pricing so that the market collectively they can arrive at a price?
It is something I thought Bitcoin like systems might help with, but any microtransaction system if it has low enough friction would work. Publishers could tweak the price of page views, readers could read or not read the content provided. Prices would float up to equilibrium and people will be able to once again reason about what an article is worth, whether it was written by a hack in a third world country or written by someone with an established reputation for quality.
The existing market is collapsing, and in its place a new market will emerge because people really do like reading stuff. And enough people like it to make it into a market. Capturing that value which was learned back in Ben Franklin's days for what became newspapers, will be relearned given the channels and technology we have today. Its cost structure will be different, I would hope more of the value would flow through to the authors but one can never predict these things. Music is in the middle of the same process. But the music industry won't cease to exist, but it could very easily transform into something we would not recognize.
I think about it slightly differently. If you ask the question "Will all the news organizations and publishers go out of business?" And the answer is obvious, no they won't.
The reason they won't is because there is a demand for content and the only people left standing will be the ones who can deliver content in a way that pays their own bills. Will the NYTimes go out of business? Perhaps.
This is the fallacy in a nutshell : "My current thinking is that if they were to stop writing, people would just get their news from elsewhere, and other publishers would gladly fill their shoes."
Nobody will commit finanical suicide to serve a market. They have to believe that there is a way to make money at it, so the only way "other publishers" jump into the market is if they can do so without losing their shirts.
What we're observing is the death of the "put up some content and slap some ads on it" way of making money. That it has worked this long has been very impressive as there is very little barrier to entry, but the commons is so thoroughly stomped upon with blog spam and content farms is finally killing it. Having service providers listen to their users and allow them to disable ads, puts the final nail in that coffin. Is it no wonder they scream loudly?
The vote is being called as they say, "Either put up with ads, or pay for your content."
The challenge though is how to negotiate what the content is worth? How do you make a market so that people can actually implement that choice over a wide range of pricing so that the market collectively they can arrive at a price?
It is something I thought Bitcoin like systems might help with, but any microtransaction system if it has low enough friction would work. Publishers could tweak the price of page views, readers could read or not read the content provided. Prices would float up to equilibrium and people will be able to once again reason about what an article is worth, whether it was written by a hack in a third world country or written by someone with an established reputation for quality.
The existing market is collapsing, and in its place a new market will emerge because people really do like reading stuff. And enough people like it to make it into a market. Capturing that value which was learned back in Ben Franklin's days for what became newspapers, will be relearned given the channels and technology we have today. Its cost structure will be different, I would hope more of the value would flow through to the authors but one can never predict these things. Music is in the middle of the same process. But the music industry won't cease to exist, but it could very easily transform into something we would not recognize.