Chris Rechtsteiner

Limited Access v. Added Value, A Pay Wall Debate

Limiting access to content hasn’t been the right answer for anything on the web, and it isn’t suddenly going to become the right answer for news on the web, either.

Rather than trying to limit content, publishers need to experiment with the ways they engage their readers.

No one can begrudge a publisher for needing to realize additional revenue from their news content. In most instances, the news isn’t researched or written for free. However, everyone should “begrudge” the publishers for continually going back to a dry well - “off the shelf pay walls”.

Two simple “pay to play” ideas that need to receive significantly more exploration are:

• Limited ad content - remove a significant number of the ads from the content and allow the premium customer to select which advertisers they wish to receive ads from.
• Ad free content - remove all ads from the content and offer the reader the right to pay for this privilege. 

With everyone from the WSJ, NYT and Washington Post to the MN StarTribune working at finding ways to cut their content off from readers with pay walls, it would be nice to see some organizations step up and offer value in exchange for an increased cost.

The speed of experimentation and testing around “pay to play” news needs to accelerate, rapidly. If it doesn’t, we are all going to be watching truly great resources vanish.