Summary: No deed goes unpunished.

Some points:

1. Each article (or content item) has a different economic value, but the cost of a sale remains significant per article.
2. So, in a collective, more profitable content will need to subsidize less profitable content.
3. Pre-paid accounts for customers would be the most efficient way to make microsales, and one-off price articles would need to be in the $2 – $10 range to be “worth the effort.”
4. Newspapers will need to figure out in advance how to price an article (which means more staff) according to its expected value, price it by the cost of producing it, or figure out the average cost of producing all the articles and price according to that. Yep, each method has its problems.
5. And what exactly is in this for the consumer? If they don’t pay for news in print, or online, then what will they be offered to make them consider doing so now? On a per-transaction basis?

I believe the media world is shifting away from creating destination stories that attempt to capture audiences. This is connected to the cultural shifts underway due to our new, Internet-bred ability to acquire in-depth information on just about anything anytime we want it.

We are moving toward becoming a even more largely freelance, information service industry, with various presentations of stories as one product on a spectrum. The core value to be pursued, more than ever before, is original information; additional value is derived from it when it is used to create other information products that provide value to someone else. Endless game of dominoes.

In the past, whenever I thought of diving into any kind of media business, I looked only to offer an audience-capturing experience (a typical story). Now I am required to ask: What other information producers will my information serve and how? Can I sell that? I am a node in a network in addition to being an endpoint.

For example, would I open a shoe store today? Create this giant location, fill it with a variety of shoes, some more valuable then others, and hope enough people show up to exceed my costs?

Probably not. First I would think about what business I’m really in. Protecting people’s feet? Providing a fashionable selection? Giving them the chance to physically handle products?

Because if you think about it, a shoe store is in a lot of businesses:

1. It’s in the storage business (jamming all those shoes into a space);
2. it’s in the opinion business (employees providing feedback on shoes);
3. it’s in the information filtering business (selling some shoes, but not others);
4. it’s in the marketing business (all those shoes advertise their makers);
5. it’s in the distribution business (a store is a node on a manufacturer’s distribution network);
6. it’s in the health business (the wrong shoes can kill your feet);
7. it’s in the fashion business (want to look good for that big meeting?);
8. it’s in just about every business you can imagine, if you get out your magnifying lens.

What the Internet does is potentially separate the value of the “physical-ness” of any business from the intangible, information-only value of that business.

Previously, information was a product enhancer; it is now the product itself, but business models haven’t caught up. Or have they? iTunes? Trade publications?

Another example: movie theaters. What are you paying for when you buy a ticket? For me, it’s a bundle of experiences: a big, dark room, good sound, massive screen, a chance to go out, a story to get lost in. I cannot perfectly replicate these values in my apartment. What a moviemaker has to decide is if she/he is in the business of providing entertainment products that can play a part in certain cultural experiences, or in the business of trying to ensnare an audience. Or both.

Because people just don’t pay for stories, they pay for the experience the story is an important part of. Your story could be valuable in the creation of many experiences, if you make an effort to identify and market to them. But how valuable? I don’t think it will be valuable enough to consistently support monolithic organizations. The value of a story is just not that consistently stable or predictable.

Inspiration: A CNN story about Riversimple, a company from the U.K. that has come up with a hydrogen-powered, less-poluting city car. Sebastien Piëch, a partner in the company, said this:

We don’t believe that making money on IP (intellectual property) is really what’s actually happening even now. We believe that service and providing the solution for customers will be where we make money.”

Does this mean news organizations need to understand customers’ problems that are created when they interact with stories? And provide solutions to those problems?

I’ve written previously about possible journalistic services.

1. Forming groups of like interest / coordinate connections
2. Being in the know / personal topic guidance
3. Creating self-identity / ascribe values to information choices
4. Forming opinions / critiquing service
5. Sharing information (conversation, e-mail, clippings, recordings, etc.) to create social bonds / facilitate simplification and effectiveness of networking
6. Commenting upon information and expressing oneself /package user-generated content into media product that can be published, shared, found, marketed, jointly monetized

II. Research and information creation: Finding and making answers.

1. Make new information / writing and editing services
2. Answer questions / how to create good questions
3. Learn ways to allot limited resources (time, money, attention, energy) / lifestyle analysis and achieving information goal service

III. Entertainment: Please get me the hell out of my reality.

1. Distraction
2. Avoid work
3. Relax
4. Satisfy curiosity
5. Explore reality
6. ///// One service for all of these activities: Information health; know when you need to alter information activity to maintain health.

At every step, the information user needs to have the option of altering the type of experience they want with your information: click here and you can access deep information suited to a research task; click there and you can go into scanning (distraction) mode.

It’s a bit like having a pair of shoes that changes according to the weather; the pair of shoes is your story (from sandals for a hot day to galoshes for a downpour); the weather is the intent your customer brings to the information. The feet…are just hairy.

I can sense your RSS overload; you need to change your information activity ASAP. Here’s a free distraction service compliments of YouTube, m0serious and newsroomnext: