So I’m getting a bit lazy about blogging today, but I feel like I need to write something to bump my wife’s Oscar gowns critique from the lead spot on this blog. Since I wrote the equivalent of a couple posts in the comment section on Josh Young’s blog entry about how journalists should build and then monetize that trust, I’ll just point you there. It’s a pretty good discussion. My comments are here, here, here, and here.

Basically, I agree with Josh about the need for journalists to build trust with their readers/communities, but I disagree with him on his suggestion about how to monetize that trust. Josh suggests charging for access to drafts of stories in progress, raw video of interviews, and increased interaction with the journalist. Basically, my issue with that is all that stuff is kind of like the gravy, while the stories, which are available for free, is the steak for which people turn to the journalists in the first place. If we can’t convince people to pay for the steak, I’m not sure how we can convince them to pay for the gravy. I won’t mind seeing the idea tried just to see how it would work out, but I’m just not sure about its chances of success in most situations.

One additional thought on the whole charge-for-something journalism model: Many have pointed out that newspapers have never really charged for news since their subscription prices have barely even covered the cost of production and delivery. That has been held up as an argument against models that involve charging users for content online.

My response to that is: Just because that’s the way it was in the past, does it mean it has to be so now, or in the future? If I held that attitude about how journalism should be practiced, I would be labeled a curmudgeon faster than you can tweet Jay Rosen. Just as we are aggressively re-examining and re-inventing the way journalism is practiced, why should we not also aggressively re-examine and re-invent the way it’s paid for? Just because journalism has been primarily ad-supported in the past, it doesn’t mean it can’t or shouldn’t become primarily (or at least more) user-supported in the future, especially since the move online has dramatically increased newspapers’ readership. I don’t have a clear answer for how or for what we can charge online, but I sure as heck won’t dismiss the idea of paid content just because it was free in the past.