No such thing as a free lunch

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and it seems that soon there may be no such thing as free news. Charging for online content is a well-debated issue, particularly given Mr Murdoch’s comments on the subject back in August. Whilst in theory, charging for content is a good idea, the problem comes when you ask people to hand over the cash.

Last week here at Cardiff School of Journalism we had a lecture by Adam Tinworth, head of blogging for Reed Business Information and the subject of pay walls was mentioned. Adam made an interesting point when he said that whilst one person is preserving their news behind a pay wall, their competitors are in the public space being part of the conversation. And as we know, it’s ALL about the conversation.

The pay wall is one significant part of the online sphere, as indicated by a nifty little diagram that Adam showed us, and which I have re-produced below:

To develop things a little further, and because I decided to get creative using Paint, my own little interpretation looks something like this:

You see, the space on the internet is a bit like a house.

The garden is our distributed space; people can come a go as they please, they can wave, say hello, and look at the birds tweeting away in front of your house. It works both ways too, you can pull up a deck chair on the lawn and heckle passers-by, if you so wish.

Next we have the public space, which is when you invite your friends into the house for tea. It’s about being social in a space your really comfortable in and engaging with someone else.

Lastly we have the closed space. The closed space is the locked doors. You have to have a key to get inside, and in the case of the web, that key is money.

It is, however, perhaps not so much that people won’t be prepared to pay for content online, but more that they have got too used to having it for free. But like any delightfully drawn paint house, the bills won’t pay themselves, and when it comes to the crunch, someone is going to have to cough up the cash to allow our news institutions to carry on putting the bread on the table.