In the grand journalistic tradition of transforming an anecdote into a trend, I'm tempted to look at today's move by the
Los Angeles Times to abandon a paid-content model for
CalendarLive.com and make this declaration: Paid content is dead.
After all, even Dow Jones found the
WSJ.com paid model so limiting that it
paid half a billion dollars to add the free site
Marketwatch.com to its stable. And "free" seems to be the
new hotness in the
old-and-busted print world, too, as media companies in big cities rush to offer their own free papers before upstart
Metro claims the whole prize.
But I won't make that declaration, and here's why. It's just not that simple.
It's not likely that there will be any more large-scale attempts at charging for news website access, but there may be revenue opportunities worth pursuing in value-added services. Over the next few years, smart media companies will be researching and market-testing a variety of business models for niche content and archives. When you see an article like
Wall Street Journal's recent "
Times Mulls Subscriptions for Internet Archives," keep in mind that tests are tests, not trends.
