How Engaging Is An Open Public Discussion If It Costs $20 To Enter?

from the civic-square dept

Wed, Apr 21st 2010 7:49pm — Mike Masnick

There's been a lot of attention paid to Pierre Omidyar's attempt to build a new kind of local news organization in Hawaii. Omidyar, of course, was the founder of eBay, and many of the early comments about the project made it sound like a "new" type of news organization that really was very much about making the community a part of the process -- something that we've pointed out makes a lot of sense. Omidyar also brought in John Temple, the former editor, president and publisher of the (failed) Rocky Mountain News -- who had been quite introspective in recognizing why RMN failed. So it seemed like the new project, originally called Peer News, had a good basis.

But the details are coming out, and they seem... odd. Apparently, the newly named "Honolulu Civil Beat," which is supposed to be more like the discussion found in a "civic square" thinks it can charge people $19.99 per month to take part. That's quite a steep entrance fee to a "civic square." I thought part of the value of the civic square was its openness.

Even worse, Temple (who clearly knows better) is trotting out the old school media's most tired excuse for why paywalls will work: claiming that because the WSJ has done it, others can as well:

"People are paying on the Web for (publications such as) The Wall Street Journal; it has established value. ... We believe people will pay for content and experience that they value."

But that ignores why people pay for the Wall Street Journal, which is not just that "it has value," but that it has scarce value that helps people make money now. I don't recall similar information being covered in the normal civic square. In the meantime, I'm sure there are plenty of local community sites for Honolulu already. Why would people want to pay extra to join just one of them?

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

Filed Under: civic square, paywalls, pierre omidyar

7 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2010 @ 9:15pm

without seeing the products to compare there is no way to know. at $20 a month, if there is strong community, it might actually work out. do you have some links to products to compare?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 21 Apr 2010 @ 9:25pm

Re:
The $20 fee would hinder the building of a strong community, so there's less likelihood of it ever having enough value for anyone to think of paying for it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
one thing, 21 Apr 2010 @ 9:49pm

one thing
Money changes directly how people comment. While not 'open,' it does filter out spam and people that aren't passionate about the area of discussion/trolls.

But yeah this is silly. Dude has enough money. Why not into it free?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
fogbugzd (profile), 21 Apr 2010 @ 10:06pm

One thing that the WSJ has going for it is that businesses pick up the tab for executives and major clients. In fact, in some sectors, your subscriptin is what says you have arrived. I doubt that many corporate expense accounts will cover the HCB.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
zegota (profile), 21 Apr 2010 @ 10:30pm

Re: Re:
Agreed, this is stupid. It'd be much better to build a community around free content, and then monetize the community (by offering extra incentives, not by locking the community by a paywall five years down the line).
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael Lockyear, 21 Apr 2010 @ 11:39pm

This is a non-starter of an idea. Not enough people will pay for the site for it to be a "community". I would be surprised / impressed if they are able to get people to use the site for free.

We are being flooded with information, and have limited time / attention. This is the real problem that the news media face - they are selling / giving away generic information in the age of the niche.

If the news industry had woken up 10 years ago they might have been able to build a platform like Google, but they missed that boat.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
ftfy, 22 Apr 2010 @ 5:37am

Re:
"at $20 a month, if there is strong community, it might actually work out."

at $20 a month, if there is a rich community, it might actually keep out the riff raff.
[ link to this | view in thread ]