Another Unnecessary Fee? Money and The Media
By Nayelis Vargas
My phone, and furthermore my laptop are configured to always show me the latest trends, news or updates going on in my community or around the world. Now like any other person, I’m programmed to automatically want to click and read onto the best titles for articles or interesting stories.
Now what I know like myself, what most people aren’t programmed to do, or enjoy, is occasionally coming across a page in which we must pay or subscribe to. Not just for the fun of it, but in order to finish enjoying or reading about what we just so happened to click on.
No one likes to be forced or bullied into doing something they don’t particularly want to do. But yet, as avid readers, and yes I mean avid because most of us who can afford to have phones and social media, we find ourselves tapping along the keyboards and entering our emails or credit card information with no real incentive.
And that, is where businesses are beginning, or eventually will begin to fail.
For years, many (prominent) news outlets, being websites like The WSJ or even The NYT have tried to get their readers to pay monthly or yearly fees and not really giving them a choice in order to read their stories. But just as people have done with bootleg movies or just how underage people manage to acquire fake id’s, there are always ways to avoid paying those fees. Or better yet getting them to pay them and be happy.
What people enjoy more is being able to navigate through pages and freely be able to view the things that they have an appreciation for without being spammed for it or having to pay. And in the case that they do have to pay (optionally), people are more likely to do so because something is in on it for them. Meaning incentives like maybe free tickets, coupons, a free subscription to a popular magazine. But let’s not forget about the most important thing, the possibility to FREELY roam.
During Tuesday’s class, a variety of websites were explored related to business of course and of how they help in the journalistic world. And one site in particular that stuck out to me was Spoon University because of how alluring it was. Its layout, the titles for each folder and all the helpful, and funny information that it contained.
A website like that is something that most likely a lot of young adults would pay subscriptions for, or a site people would buy from because it’s inviting and promising. And again is not forcing one to pay in order to become a part of their feed.
In an age where journalism is upgrading to being shared through technology, it’s in the best interest of sites looking to make a profit out of their audiences to give them a choice. Not corral them into feeling forced to “empty” their bank accounts in order to get their daily news fixes.
