Nicholas Carr on innovation of the newspaper business

Aquí la entrada completa, titulada "Raise high the paywalls, publishers"

Extracto introductorio:

"This is the third in a series of occasional pieces on the transformation of the newspaper business. The first two pieces, both published in 2009, were The Writing Is on the Paywall and Google in the Middle.

Information doesn't want to be free. Nor does it want to be expensive. Information wants to be reasonably priced. And when it's reasonably priced, it gets purchased.

The internet has changed patterns of supply and demand in media businesses in profound ways. We're not going back to the way things used to be. But it's a mistake to assume that the contours of the landscape in the immediate aftermath of the disruption are the permanent contours of the landscape. New patterns of supply and demand - and, in turn, new ways of doing business - emerge to replace old ones, though it can take a long time for those patterns to mature and become stable. And in the meantime, there can be a whole lot of wreckage to clean up."

Extracto clave:

"What we've witnessed in the recording industries in general is that the internet has actually expanded, not constricted, the ways people consume media. In particular, we've seen the establishment of five modes of consumption,* four of which produce revenue for the supplier:

1. Unit purchase. Buy an item (song, album, movie, TV show, etc.) for a fixed price in order to own it in (theoretical) perpetuity.

2. Subscription. Pay a recurring fee to access a collection of items. The fee may be variable, tied to limits on access and use.

3. Rental. Pay a nonrecurring fee to access a particular item or a collection of items for a set period of time.

4. Ad-subsidized. Watch or listen for free, but with some form of advertising included.

5. Freeloading. Unauthorized copying or trading."

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Aquí agregamos, que lo que les falta a los períodicos para volverse atractivos otra vez, es entender la segmentación vía Jobs-To-Be-Done. Ejemplos:

1. Nunca han habido períodicos para niños, para asistirlos en sus tareas escolares, entre otras cosas; muchos padres de seguro estarían encantados de pagar una suscripción tal...

2. Abundan los períodicos de negocios, que de seguro tienen su audiencia fiel; pero de igual manera podrían lanzarse el períodico de artes y letras, y el de ciencias naturales, y el de comida gourmet (no pequeños insertos, sino un períodico de frecuencia fin de semana por ejemplo, de 50 páginas como mínimo)... (una revista es otra cosa; y una mera sección en el períodico tradicional también es insuficiente)

3. El períodico 'de la gente': simplemente que se publique, sin editar texto o imágenes, adecuadamente organizado, todo lo que la gente quiera decir-mostrar-etc (sólo filtrando el libelo, la calumnia, o el odio). Otra vez, una vez a la semana, el viernes por ejemplo. Los estudiantes de periodismo podrían ayudar en la tarea del filtro :-)