Brill's plan to charge users $5 to $10 a month to read the news online

"Journalism Online said its technology would give publishers flexibility in how they charge for digital content, including collecting monthly subscriptions or micro-payments for individual articles. Its estimates that a website that attracts 1 million monthly visitors could reap additional annual revenue of $5 million to $10 million.

The LA Times story fails to say how that money is to be made. But simple math says that each reader would pay an average of $5 to $10 for their news online.

I just don't see the product being that valuable.

Journalism Online is a startup created by Steve Brill, creator of CourtTV, and Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of The Wall Street Journal. They claim agreements with 506 newspapers, magazines and online news sites that reach more than 90 million monthly visitors - but they don't say who the clients are.

They likely are not the Tribune Co. (LA and Chicago), Gannett (USA Today), NY Times or the Wall Street Journal. Those who do not charge for the news will be the big winners if this idea actually takes shape.

Newspapers tried this model with classified advertising. Ah but Craigslist provided a better, national service for free. And it only takes one giving it away for free to ruin a business model in the online world.

AP's confiedential Play Plan for content leaked: Strengthen copyright, horde news, adopt Wikimodel (no mention of its volunteer contributors)

The Associated Press has laid out a plan to put news behind a pay wall.

The confidential plan was not for distribution but was mentioned at the Nieman Lab and broadcast widely through Romenesko, a site I read daily. But who scraped who there and did it hurt or help?

I'll share some amazing numbers from the document (numbers I'm sure you have to pay for) later today.

For now some quick thoughts:

The document pointed to the success of the Wikipedia model - "standing, authoritative pages" (that's all you got - have you read The Long Tail or Clay Shirky - it's not that elementary).

The document fails to mention or acknowledge that Wikipedia is updated and maintained by any visitor to the Website who wants to participate. It is updated constantly.

The document also didn't say - there is no advertising at Wikipedia and only a few dozen are paid.

And oh year, no one pays to read the stories. Even the flimsiest newspaper archive (except the New York Times - YEA!) charges to search its archives.

"AP simply can't continue to provide the same quality of golabal news coverage under the current rules, where second hand news gets most of the eyeballs."

"Emboldened by the uncertain state of law around content use online ..." sounds like Jon Stewat making fun of George Bush talking about terrorists.

"AP News Registry is a way to identify, record and track every piece of content AP makes."

Big Brother?

The AP wants to be like Wikipedia Then they point out Wikipedia garnered only 6.8 percent of the audience who searched "Michael Jackson" in the month after his death. 6.8 percent made Wikipedia the second largest beneficiary of traffic?, slightly behind only Google News (7.1%). AP and Google already have a partnership.

The piece never gets into the fact that the market for news is so diluted that it seems impossible to discern the producers from the users. Will AP applaud bloggers for pointing people to news sites or will AP seek to punish bloggers for reprinting information?