Spent some time with a group of digital editors from the regional press. As you would expect one of the issues they were grappling with was how to make money from their web activities.
Clearly this is generating a lot of interest expecially as it can be dressed up as a Rusbridger vs Mudoch argument.
Can I be controversial and suggest that actually they agree?
I also suspect that both of them are wrong.
Here’s why.
If I understand them correctly, in the red corner we have the Guardian wishing to be free and in the blue corner we have News International wishing to charge for its output. Both are behaving as though the bundle of items that currently go to make up a newspaper (both online and offline) is theirs and that what is in the bundle is for them to decide.
That view swims against the tide of the Internet.
In industry after industry the Internet is a powerful aggregator (and dis-aggregator) that enables the consumer to create the bundle they desire. Think Dell PCs, think low cost airlines, think itunes. Twenty years ago you would buy the package decided by someone else - not any more.
So given that a level of news is free from the public sector broadcasting service the debate needs to move on to how can newspapers monetise all the ancilliary content (including editorial and comment) that they produce.
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