A User-First Framework for Sustaining Local News - Harvard ...

evenue as possible from old platforms and enables as much financial traction as
possible with the new ones.
There’s no way to know how much local news, in what forms, might be sustained by
making the right moves on the following fronts. It’s more a matter of experimenting
with them as touchstones, pushing through the destruction in pursuit of creative new
paths on the other side.
PAID CONTENT
Shift the debate from what publishers might charge to what users actually want.
The debate over paid content is approaching a key turning point, especially in terms
of a growing awareness of the sort of content that might support payment and the
technical infrastructure to charge in ways that can be easily adjusted based on user
response. News organizations will soon have at their disposal mechanisms that will
enable much more aggressive experimentation with user fees than has been possible
thus far. Equipped with tools to charge, all that publishers need now is a framework for
creating or packaging products and services that customers will want to pay for. The
most promising areas fall into two main categories: sites or applications that facilitate an
experience of interacting with content that surpasses what’s available without charge
and/or a type of high‐value content that users need to do their job or enjoy a hobby or
personal passion. Perhaps increased experimentation will move the paid content debate
from that of “dogma…to something scientifically studied,” as analyst Vin Crosbie urged
way back in 2003. 35
In a much‐anticipated move, The New York Times announced January 20, 2010, that it
would begin charging for news online at the beginning of 2011. 36 The Times said it would
rely on a meter providing users with access to a certain number of articles each month
before requiring payment of a flat fee to read unlimited content. The paper’s executives
said they had not decided how many articles would be free or what the fee will be.
Among other things, they said they needed a year to prepare the software required to
coordinate online payment with its database of print subscribers, who will get free
access to online articles. One of the paper’s biggest challenges will be preserving its
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