During our Week 9 session we debated some more whether pay walls in online journalism can work. This time we discussed our assignment: Analyzing this excerpt of Chris Anderson's Free and coming up with an argument for or against the future of pay-wall publications.
Surprisingly many of you argued for the viability of online subscriptions, stating that if the writing were compelling enough, the product focused enough and the content fresh enough, we should pay for it. I still held that the pay wall's possible heyday was at least 10 years ago, when the industry would have had to erect a universal wall and have each and every publication adhere to it. Today there would be too many leaks by aggregators.
How to make it work then? Lots of readers. If advertising is 10 times cheaper online, you need 10 times as many readers -- at least.
As a final assignment we looked at a Los Angeles Times story about the number of marijuana dispensaries remaining in the city -- about 500 despite attempts to crack down -- and wrote quick news posts in about 15 minutes. Most of you did an amazing job, injecting voice and attitude and picking up nuanced facts that I missed. Here's the piece I ended up writing in class and publishing the next day.
As parting advice I encouraged you to promote yourselves through Facebook and Twitter and, most importantly, through a showcase website that you can send employers to. I suggested getting a custom URL so that you're not telling folks to head to a ".blogspot" address. And I said you should put your favorite "clips," posts, and self-produced videos there. Don't be shy. This business is about go-getters.
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