It may sound overly simplistic, but even when you buy a bottle of water or a can of Pepsi, you DO actually get something. You can hold it in your hand, you USE it. And those industries have been successful after years and years of clever marketing to make us want what they’re selling.

I don’t have the answer either, but surely it’s not as simple as turning on the tap, putting it in a container, putting a cap on it and expecting people to buy it.

Unfortunately, because of the serious cutbacks to many North American newsrooms, most media outlets would be offering a bottle that is only half full, but charging a premium for it.

The thing is, tap water is not given away free. People pay for access to tap water. And, very importantly, you cannot drink from the tap in every water, so the only way of getting purified water is by buying bottled water (or boiling it, or adding disinfectants, but this takes time, and is not as efficient or convenient).

On top of that, in the case that you happen to live in a place where you can actually drink tap water (it’s not as common as you might think), as Ryan has pointed out, you may buy it once, and then just refill it…

The bottled water analogy also assumes that there is a clear distinction between form and content or content and container. We would have to look at that more closely if we want to use it as an analogy for news.

Selling news as if it’s bottled water would be a disaster: It’s an admission that the content is just another commodity — which, last time I checked, hasn’t been a good strategy for journalism. Far better, I think, to sell news like wine: lots of local vineyards growing individual varieties of grapes that have their own flavor & appeal. (No one would ever mistake a Boston red for a New York white.) Or if that’s too high brow, think micro-brewed beers.

If you still think journalism needs help from the brand managers at, say, Pepsi, then it might help to remember John Sculley and his rather, ummm… *uneven* experience as the CEO of Apple. http://tr.im/mucl

The analogy is flawed. If people could grab a bottle of water off the same shelf that held bottled water that cost something guess what would happen? right. The free water would fly off the shelves, the water with a charge would sit there. That’s the situation that more closely describes news these days. it’s as easy for me to type in one URL as another, so if I can get the news for free and it’s substantially the same as the paid version… why pay?

Too many news sources act as if this is still the middle of the 20th century when we had a couple of papers and 3 major channels of TV for news. In the 50 years of my life I’ve gone from being reliant on 2 papers and 3 networks carried by 3 local stations on a predefined schedule to a world where I have hundreds of newspapers, TV station and audio from around the world all available on demand. Yet news organization still all cover the same half dozen stories as leads – and then wonder why I’m not interested. Give me something unique. Not a difference face on the same product, give me a product that’s unique. Or, of course, you can fade away. Your choice.

And yet, people do pay to attend higher education institutions, and scholars of all disciplines have to pay to read online journals and even to publish books (or their institutions do). People pay to attend conferences. Granted, there are other values added to these beyond information (a lot of people think that “networking” is more important than any “abstract” knowledge obtained).

We don’t live yet in a society in which all types of information are free.

A very obvious strategy is to deliver different kinds of news on different formats. So you get something online, something different on the paper. You want what is on the paper? You have to pay for it.

I know this has been and is being tried, but I don’t know how successful it has been.

I do pay to read the newspaper. Not every day. But I do. There must be more people out there who do. Unless Americans, of all peoples in the Earth have decided to stop paying for anything.

Bonnie,
Your points are well taken if the focus is the web. You are spot on with no convenience advantage. However printed newspapers win on convenience in the physical world. The very fact of their ease of disposable and the no risk of losing or damaging gives them the advantage over any e-reader. Once paper becomes connected to wireless via cell phones the remaining speed and non measurability disadvantage goes away.

I think the water metaphor is just right. The value is convenience. The perception of value is about “people like us” drink Perrier etc etc.

Likewise the value of print is sharing and convenience. The perceived value is “people like us” read the New York Times or the “Smalltown Courier.” or the “High School Times.” An under appreciated function of print is to create in a community a more open and flexible notion of “people like us.”