The Herald made a weak effort to gather revenue this way when it tried to charge for its columnists a decade or so ago - and quickly discovered nobody really gave a shit about anybody's opinion that much. Since then, neither of the big boys have made any concrete moves towards properly implementing any kind of real paywall.
There has still been a lot going on behind the scenes, and Stuff and the Herald have both done a tremendous amount of work getting a paywall system set up, so it's ready to go as soon as the corporate winds change. They've actually both come pretty close to pulling the trigger on it - the Herald in particular came really, really close a couple of years ago, before the corporate masters decided they needed to be the #1 one site, and went actively hunting for clicks instead - but all the news is still free.
Still, the whispers about a possible paywall persist, especially when it can be implemented with a couple of clicks. And one of the sites is now actively considering it again and an announcement may be due later this year.
We're not judging the site for doing this - good journalism costs good money and something has to be done. Even after decades of trial and error, we're still trying to work out this whole online news thing, and still trying to work out how to make a sustainable model out of it all.
There have been innumerable examples of paywalls around the world going up and staying up - generating some kind of revenue. Even if they're porous as hell, producing a small amount of money is better than making no money at all, and there are several high profile institutions that have set up and sustained a paywall.
Hell, even closer to home, the NBR has been holding fairly steady with its paywall, and putting more and more of its content under lock and key as it seeks to maintain a solid core of loyal readers who don't mind paying for their biz news.
So nobody can blame the editors at one of the big boys of NZ news for looking at it. They've got to try something, and Media Scrum stands by its theory that we've finally reached the point where all the money and goodwill is starting to really run dry, and something us to give.
Putting up a paywall might even pay off and might turn out to be a good idea after all. What is a really, really bad idea is when unrealistic expectations are set up about it.
Online editors at the publisher kicking the tyres of a paywall have been told for several years to chase the clicks, no matter what the cost to credibility and authority (two things that could be surprisingly fucking useful when you want people to give you money for your words and pictures). Unsurprisingly, they have raised questions about what they're supposed to do when the premium content goes behind the wall - do they focus on those hits, or on spending the time making sure the premium content really does look premium.
And in a mind-numbing display of ignorance, they were told not to worry, because the numbers won't go down. Everything will be fine. This is fine.
This could happen, just like it has never happened with any other paywall that has ever gone up anywhere. Of course the numbers are going to drop, it's going to happen, and pretending that they won't is setting yourself up for massive disappointment. We're all for hopeless optimism at Media Scrum - we genuinely believe there is a lot of great stuff going on, and that journalism still has a bright future - but this is madness.
The head honchos might be saying things like this, but they've got to be realistic about it. People are going to be turned off, even if the vast majority of content remains free as fuck, because that's how human beings work - journalists, of all fucking people, should know that.
All this optimism is going to do is make people working at the online coalface feel like miserable failures, because the thing they were told wouldn't happen has happened, and it's highly likely that they're going to take the brunt of the blame for it. Corporate optimism has a habit of covering the poor fuckers on the shop floor in shit when it all goes sour. It's happened before in newsrooms around this country, and it's going to happen again, because nobody seems to have learned a fucking thing.
Good luck with the paywall, kids. Just try not to panic when it feels like the world is crashing around you.
- Katherine Lombard
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