@neilperkin on paywalls in publishing and how the right way might look.

This clip from Neil Perkin really underscores a point I was recently trying to make regarding the need for publishers to change more than just the output technology of their offerings. Simply taking your current publishing process and putting a “digital” face on it is a dead end. The entire system needs to be re-imagined not just the last mile.

I’m not a fan of micropayments for news in its current form. And I don’t have all the answers (for it will surely be no single solution), but if it was
up to
me I’d be experimenting furiously with how to create some scarcity out
of the ubiquity. Developing unique, highly targeted or personalised
services, packages and subscriptions, informed and supported by social
technology. I’d add as much value to those services as I could, and I’d
make that value as visible as possible so every non-subscriber could see what
they were missing. I’d
experiment with packaging news in ways that offered new levels of
personalisation so I could follow stories as they unfolded. And I’d take a long, hard look at my traditional operational set up. As
Thomas Baekdal says
, the biggest problem might not be how to make more
money, but instead
“how to get rid of all those unnecessary expenses”.Read more at neilperkin.typepad.com