June 19, 2010

Google’s Newspass: Will News Orgs Live to Fight Another Day?

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/trialsanderrors/4165388795/">...trialsanderrors/Flickr</a>

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The media revels in pondering over its woes—let’s call it journalism-ism. And while fingers point and doomsayers predict the apocolypse, some organizations are working toward viable solutions. Surprisingly, one of the most proactive is a company largely blamed for catalyzing the problem to begin with: Google.

Google News, a content aggregator that pools articles from over 25,000 publications around the world, has come under heavy criticism from news orgs over its 8-year history for stealing content. Recognizing the importance of creating symbiotic relationships with news establishments rather than working at odds with them, Google is brainstorming a wide range of models that just might save the industry. In a widely-read piece in the June 2010 issue of the Atlantic, James Fallows outlined many of them, including the use of paywalls to charge readers online, though details by and large remained under wrap…until now!

Italian newspaper La Repubblica published a piece yesterday discussing Newspass, Google’s much-anticipated (yet highly secretive) meta-paywall model for online news content, cites PaidContent.org:

  La Repubblica says that, with Newspass, people will be able to log-in to the sites of participating news publishers using a single login. Publishers will be able to designate what type of payment they want to accept, including subscriptions and micropayments. People who find content from participating publishers in Google search will see a paywall icon next to that content and be able to purchase access directly from there using Checkout.

So the details have only been partially unwrapped. But if what La Repubblica says is true, then it seems that Google is developing real solutions to the problem of monetizing online news content (though this magazine proudly offers its content online free of charge). The implications of such a model remain to be seen (if only some sites join on board with Newspass, will readers tend toward sites offering free content? Can paywalls recoup the cost lost to decreased advertising in print?). But reporters need to believe that a successful business model for media orgs will soon be developed. As goes the old adage of academia: Publish, or perish.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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