Will Readers Fund an Open Journalism?

Relations between journalism and the web have always been tense, but things are getting nasty. A coalition of publishers, journalists and scholars is taking shape in opposition to "parasitic aggregators" in order to "protect" "original" content. Moral and political agitation is afoot which will challenge deeply held convictions about the nature of journalism and the web. These forces align well with a number of ventures aiming to lower the barriers preventing orderly payment in exchange for access to news. At the other end of the spectrum, a new crop of startups and ventures, recently profiled by Steve Outing, is working an angle some are calling micropatronage. Will either of these approaches encourage a sustainable, high quality journalism? What kind of web would be compatible with each? In this post I will compare and contrast the two major families of microfunding technologies, namely micropayments and micropatronage, while briefly examining some arguments for and against them. I argue that both families of microfunding technologies directly address readers as morally engaged participants in the journalistic enterprise, while differing in their level of commitment to an open journalism on an open web.

Early this year, Walter Isaacson made a case for micropayments. Newspapers are in danger, and readers are part of the problem: "those who believe that all content should be free should reflect on who will open bureaus in Baghdad or be able to fly off as freelancers to report in Rwanda under such a system." Not only newspapers, but journalism itself is in trouble. This creates a climate in which responsible readers can and will reflect on their own role in the ecosystem. If readers truly love journalism, and all indications are that they do, then they will happily invest in its success if publishers give them the right tools. A flexible array of micropayment solutions, in which readers are charged for access to their news, will provide readers with a way to be a part of the solution to a rejuvenated, online journalism with strong links between publishers and their readers.

Clay Shirky disagrees. According to Shirky, the internet has fundamentally changed the nature of media, and newspapers are no longer viable in their traditional forms. Micropayment schemes are quixotic refusals to see the new state of the media, ineffecual bits of nostalgia for the organizational forms of yesterday. Readers of most kinds of news and magazines "hate" micropayments: they solve no problems felt by users, interfere with highly valued sharing activities, and are only entertained by old media executives and people who can't imagine a journalism without newspapers. Micro or "small" payments, as Shirky calls them, have been around for a long time. Isaacson is resuscitating old business models, long since discredited, without any new contribution. Society itself is in the midst of a fundamental and inherently unpredictable transformation. Instead of saving newspapers, we need to foster another journalism.

Shirky's rebuttal does not address one of Isaacson's points: that readers of news are partly responsible for the recent decline in its quality and available supply. Isaacson is arguing that the current crisis in newspapers, if properly framed, will serve to motivate readers to examine their own role in the production of news. He diagnoses the health of the public sphere in a way that dovetails with credible historical analysis, like that of Paul Starr. In this respect his argument differs from previous cases made for micropayments, like that of Scott McCloud. Isaacson's call is rooted in a shared problem affecting readers and publishers alike; he has made a moral argument for news as a form of mutual accountability between readers and publishers, and he has tied the recent historical crisis to this moral case. He is addressing the reader directly. But will the reader respond?

I turn now to the micropatronage family of funding proposals. These services generally assume that content will be free to access, and that readers or visitors will choose to financially support the producers whose content they value. Some systems, like Kachingle, Contenture, and Inamoon, automatically distribute support to a reader's most-visited sources; other systems, like payyattention, enable the reader to consciously support individual pieces of content as a part of the daily read-evaluate-forward cycle.

Perhaps because the debate so far has been framed in terms of "paid" vs "free" solutions, micropatronage solutions face skepticism from old and new media camps alike. One of the greatest barriers to imagining a journalism supported by micropatronage is the widespread assumption that people don't "want" to "pay." Another barrier is the perception among many journalists that some forms of micropatronage are like "tipping," and hence undesirable. I hope readers will expand on this in the comments, but I might hazard the guess that "tipping" is perceived as undesirable for two reasons: first, it seems to portray journalists as importuning readers for contributions in a way that intrudes on the reader's serenity and highlights the journalist's dependent status, thereby weakening journalistic autonomy and polluting the information environment. Second, it is associated with small sums of money. This interacts with the first assumption about readers: since readers don't "want" to "pay," only small sums will be raised, and the journalist is transformed into a creature not only intrusive, but vulnerable and dependent.

Such critical responses are tied to a vision of the reader as a certain kind of moral agent, motivated in various ways, obligated in others. In particular, the reader such critics imagine has no conscious commitment to journalism, and no understanding that readers themselves are partly responsible for the journalism they experience. The reader's predilection for good, shareable content combines with an aversion to payment, thereby siphoning good reporting out of a limited tank of supply. Is this an accurate model of today's news readers, or an artifact of institutional decline? Can the crisis in journalism be faced without directly addressing and enrolling these readers?

The two families of microfunding technologies can be compared by looking at the kind of readership they imagine and address. Like Walter Isaacson, advocates of micropatronage systems directly address readers as morally engaged participants whose choices are a fundamental part of the journalism they experience. Both families of microfunding technologies invite readers to imagine and produce a journalism in which they, and the authors they read, are mutually dependent participants in an enterprise founded on a shared set of core values. The aim of both approaches is to transform the question "why would readers pay?" into the question "what kind of journalism will readers and publishers produce?"

Micropatronage advocates differ from Isaacson, however, in their level of commitment to an open journalism on an open web. Micropayments provide access to news in exchange for currency, thus assuming a denial of access as the default case. They limit access to the most reliable or significant news stories to a select pool of invested supporters. Micropatronage solutions, in contrast, assume open access as the default case, and rely on readers and publishers to consciously co-produce valued content. Unlike micropayment advocates, micropatronage promoters strongly tie their own interests to the ongoing health of an open web.

Opponents of micropayments are fighting to keep online journalism as open as the web has been, but at what cost? Serious arguments are emerging that an open journalism is moribund by nature: it comes at the heavy cost of crippling cuts in original reporting, and the government corruption that inevitably ensues. This line of argument was explored by Paul Starr early this year. It has recently been taken up by Connie Schultz and Richard Posner. It leads to policy recommendations that prohibit certain forms of aggregation and linking, thus reducing the reach of open journalism.

Spurred by the current crisis, advocates of micropayment and subscription models are constructing a moral and political coalition with an increasing sense of urgency. It aims to reconstruct a journalism whose many faults may cloud but could never erase its real virtues. Meanwhile, advocates of an open web continue to experiment. The question raised by micropatronage is whether readers will pay to keep journalism -- and the web -- open, if not free.