{"id":294025,"date":"2010-02-08T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2745923954793947308.post-8805634153619438014"},"modified":"2010-02-08T10:49:56","modified_gmt":"2010-02-08T14:49:56","slug":"is-online-news-just-ramen-noodles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/294025","title":{"rendered":"Is online news just ramen noodles?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"COLOR: rgb(102,102,102);font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;\">By Seth C. Lewis<br \/>niemanlab.org<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><strong>What media economics research can teach us about valuing paid content<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>The New York Times\u2019 announcement that it would be charging for some access to its website, starting in 2011, rekindled yet another round of debate about paywalls for online news. Beyond the practical question (will it work?) or the theoretical one (what does this mean for the Times\u2019 notion of the \u201cpublic\u201d?), there remains another question to be untangled here \u2014 perhaps one more relevant to the smaller papers who might be thinking of following the Times\u2019 example:<\/p>\n<p>What is the underlying economic value of online news, anyway? <\/p>\n<p>Media economist Iris Chyi [see disclosure below] has a few ideas about this problem. An assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas, she has been researching the paid-vs.-free, print-vs.-online conundrum since the late \u201990s. Her research has consistently found that even while online news use continues growing, its preference lags behind that of traditional media. In other words: Even as audiences transition from TV\/print news consumption to the web, they still like the traditional formats better for getting news, all other things being equal.<\/p>\n<p>Now, this seemingly makes no sense: How could a format as clunky, messy and old-school as print \u201cbeat\u201d such a faster, richer and more interactive medium on likability?<\/p>\n<p>Chyi believes she found the answer in the economic principle of \u201cinferior goods.\u201d <span class=\"fullpost\">The idea is simple: When income increases, consumers buy more \u201cnormal goods\u201d (think: steak) and fewer \u201cinferior goods\u201d (think: ramen noodles). When income goes down, the opposite occurs (again, all things being equal in economics terms). Inferiority, in this case, isn\u2019t so much a statement of actual quality as it is of consumer perception and demand. If we get richer, our desires for steak go up and our desires for ramen go down.<\/p>\n<p>What does this mean for journalism? \u201cUsers perceive online news in similar ways \u2014 online news fulfills certain needs but is not perceived as desirable as print newspapers,\u201d Chyi said. . . <a href=\"http:\/\/www.niemanlab.org\/2010\/02\/is-online-news-just-ramen-noodles-what-media-economics-research-can-teach-us-about-valuing-paid-content\/?utm_source=feedburner&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NiemanJournalismLab+%28Nieman+Journalism+Lab%29\" >READ FULL STORY<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img width='1' height='1' src='https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/2745923954793947308-8805634153619438014?l=news.newspaperproject.org' alt='' \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Seth C. Lewisniemanlab.org What media economics research can teach us about valuing paid content The New York Times\u2019 announcement that it would be charging for some access to its website, starting in 2011, rekindled yet another round of debate about paywalls for online news. Beyond the practical question (will it work?) or the theoretical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4246,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-294025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4246"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294025\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}