Information wants to be free, reporters want to be paid, Part 20

The peachy-colored Financial Times poked its finger in the eye of general circulation newspapers today with an editorial basically telling us that if we have something worth reading people will pay, if not …

The editorial correctly notes that people, especially journalists, are too quick to blame the Internet for the financial hard times in which so many newspapers find themselves. I’m yet to be convinced that people who prowl the Internet are really consuming free news when there is so much other free stuff to ogle and Google. The level of knowledge of current events is abysmal. Ask anyone.

“The degree to which the travails of papers are a threat to an informed democracy can be exaggerated, particularly by journalists,” the FT folks tell us. “The Internet has made print less profitable but has also made new forms of information-gathering and commentary possible. Bloggers get a bad press but low-cost publishing helps new sources to emerge.”

The good free marketers that they are, the editorialists conclude with this bit of advice, “Perhaps some of the reporting done up to now by for-profit papers will in future be funded by foundations or trusts. But the industry should not lose faith in the free market. When people really want or need something, they will pay for it, one way or another. If today’s publishers cannot convince their readers to do so, they will be overtaken by others that can.”