Have Web Site, Will Investigate
from the services,-not-content dept
Business Week has noticed an interesting phenomenon on the web, but then misunderstood what it means. They're writing a story about what they call "pay to read" journalism where individuals pay a "journalist" to go out and investigate a story. They focus mainly on the case of Christopher Allbritton, a former AP writer who raised $14,334 from visitors to his website to go to Iraq and file completely independent reports. Business Week wonders if this is the future of journalism having "paid content". However, this is, yet again, an example of people not paying for content but a service. It's more "pay to write" journalism than "pay to read". The visitors were paying for some future event - the ability for Allbritton to go to Iraq and write this commentary - not some already written content. The end result was then available to anyone - those who paid and those who didn't. However, those who paid got additional perks, such as earlier access to the material, additional backup materials, and the ability to interact directly with the writer. It's the perfect example of using content as a free promotional item to sell a service.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
