Newspapers have never made the bulk of their money from a subscription model. It’s always been an advertising based model, that is why your Sunday paper (the most popular edition) is so big: it’s packed with ads. Why do the executives that run these media companies think that I am willing to pay them for their online content, all of the sudden?
If I do pay, will the ads disappear? Of course not. They can’t afford to do that. The money they’ll recoup by charging for a subscription will never make up for advertising, it will just be a little extra.
I am not sympathetic to the newspaper industry. They could have seen this coming years ago. Wasn’t it obvious that the internet adoption rate wasn’t slowing down?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against paying for great content, but I am against paying for the inefficient infrastructure that exists at most media companies. I am against paying for the advertising account managers and the travel agents. If I am paying for content, I want to pay the content producer – not the provider.
