The how-to-save-newspapers debate continues. In The New York Times today, Slate founder Michael Kinsley agrees with Felix that micropayments -- "pay by the slice," as Kinsley terms it -- are not the answer:
Micropayment advocates imagine extracting as much as $2 a month from readers. The Times sells just over a million daily papers. If every one of those million buyers went online and paid $2 a month, that would be $24 million a year. Even with the economic crisis, paper and digital advertising in The Times brought in about $1 billion last year. Circulation brought in $668 million. Two bucks per reader per month is not going to save newspapers.
Meanwhile, Walter Isaacson was on The Daily Show last night to discuss his Time cover story,"How to Save Your Newspaper," which touched off the current round of debate. "You gotta get away from this notion that good reporting has always got to be given away for free on the internet...You gotta get to some system where some journalists are being paid for going to Baghdad," he said.
Stewart pointed out that it's hard to get consumers to start paying for something they're already getting for free. Isaacson's response: "We made a mistake."
