"Copy/Payste"- Funding Model for Independent

The financial crisis in the advertising sector turns out to be a pretty productive context for new business models in the newspaper sector. After realising that advertising alone can not provide enough revenues for the production of quality content online,  many publishers started implementing new ideas for funding print/internet journalism: Rupert Murdoch already  announced a withdrawal from the advertising-financed free content provision, Figaro introduced a pay per article business model.

British Newspaper Independent, on the other side,  developed a pretty peculiar way of refunding quality content. Users who would like to print its articles, may do so but  only up to the limit of five copies. Every further copy should be respectively paid for.

Thus, professors who would like to print out articles for their students or managers who would like to keep their staff up to date will  have to pay about one pound per article printed. The price per copy varies depending on the sheer number of copies printed.

Of course, if one does not want to pay for the copies he/she can always find a technological way round the limitation. But that’s not Independent’s point- it is more about raising the users’ awareness that quality content is something one normally pays for. Normally…

Related articles:

Le Figaro Introduces Paid Content Online. Any Volunteers to Pay?

Editing Your Own Newspaper in Switzerland

Going Online is not Always the Way Out for Newspapers

For further information: Frankfurter Rundschau, Meedia.de

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