Filed by Bil at 7:49 pm under The Media

I keep coming back to the future of journalism, perhaps because I care, or perhaps because BuzzMachine is near the top of my bookmarks on my browser. The most recent article from Jeff Jarvis over at this blog reprints a study regarding consumers’ willingness (or lack thereof) to pay for news content on the internet. I was going to hop into this discussion, already 40 comments in, when it dawned on me that the comment I was leaving was getting long, so I’ll post it here on my own blog instead, and leave a much shorter one for the BuzzMachine crowd.

Here is the unabridged version of my comment:

This may not be the most significant addition to this discussion, since we’re talking about news websites, but maybe something to keep in the back of your mind:

While I am not, in principle, opposed to the Kindle or iPad or other digital readers, I would never want to pay for one for myself. And I AM opposed to paying money for news websites when so much is already available online for free.

However…if I HAD a Kindle, I would absolutely pay for a subscription to both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. The reasons I don’t currently pay for them are 1) I fear I might never see them, due to either thieves at the doorstep or just me simply forgetting to pick them up, and 2) I would never be able to read through two big paper booklets on the train ride into work in the morning. Also, I’ve never liked the feel of newsprint in my hands. It feels like dirty paper.

But I would pay to have those newspapers in a clean, easy-to-carry, easy-to-read, clean, convenient device that I would have on me all the time.

The Pew study strikes a particular chord: “…if a user had to pay for a New York Times article on Haiti, evidence suggests that he or she would just look for another source that could provide the basic information. The nuances of depth or breadth in the pay story may not be valued enough to induce payment over a free alternative.”

This is exactly right, and I realize when I look at the news online, all I care about are the basic facts. The thing I miss most about having a newspaper to read (and this may be a byproduct of the internet, or it may not) is the comfort of feeling well-informed. I am probably better-informed than ever before, but there is a human connection that has very noticeably been lost.

There’s something about being able to hold something in your hands that makes people more willing to pay for it. Since we can’t hold the internet in our hands, it never feels as valuable.

With a digital reader downloading my papers, I’d never be as well-informed as I could be with the endless stream of information from the internet, I’d at least FEEL informed, and that’s an improvement to the quality of my life that the internet has never been able to provide (no matter how much I love the internet).

So that’s my two cents, and perhaps it’s not entirely relevant to the discussion already in progress, but it got me thinking about the balance we need to strike between the internet and the real world. This goes for everything, not just newspapers. The internet is great and I am so informed and it’s always changing and it’s (mostly) free and I have sort of reconnected with people with whom I fell out of touch well over a decade ago, and yet…

You can’t hug the internet.

I mean, you wouldn’t WANT to hug a newspaper, either, newspapers are dirty. But on the internet, you don’t get that satisfying crinkle sound as you turn the filthy page.