Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Have your pay

Anton Vowl has had a brilliant idea:

It's a simple way to monetise digital news while keeping content free to view for everyone. …
All newspapers have to do is simply charge for online comments. Call it "my two cents' worth" or something - and make it literally a couple of cents. People will be so incensed by the stories of the evil PC Brigade stopping ordinary middle-class Anglo-Saxon British families from writing racist abuse on bricks and throwing it through people's window - an appalling clampdown on free speech in this once-great country which has been ruined by ZaNuLab - that they'll be happy to pay a couple of pennies to have their say.

Very, very good. Harnessing the power of angry stupidity has a lot going for it. But I think there may be an even better idea – one that will also help to open up the ranks of journalism to new entrants.

Let online readers vote (for 50p a go, say) for which writer they want kicked off the paper each week.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I had a friend who worked on the Sky Sports website - they had a feature on the site - there would be a question on a current sporting event, with a yes/no/don't know answer - people were encouraged to text in to answer the question - the texts costs 50p. Every day tens of thousands of people would vote and at least a quarter of the would vote 'Don't Know'. 50p to vote "Don't Know".

Tom Freeman said...

Wow. "Don't know" says it all.