While I believe this to be true, I also believe that the value that many (most?) individuals place on news is LOW.

That is why they won’t pay!

The Internet is sort of like retuning to the era before the rotary press, where both fixed and marginal costs are low. That encourages much smaller distributions, where the potential to charge for content is higher. But nevertheless, the same principle of information goods applies. There’s some related discussion in this segment of Josh’s interview with Jay Hamilton.

Bill, your points are well taken, but I should note that Panera received 40 cents per copy from Panera.

And a question came in from @rissriss222 on Twitter: “why the disconnect between the value of news & how much it’s worth monetarily?” According to Hamilton, people may value news in an abstract way — they think it’s good for society that newspapers exist, say — but don’t usually factor that into their decision of whether to pay for news. In part, that’s because they can obtain the public good of having newspapers exist without paying for them. Sure, if nobody paid for newspapers, they probably couldn’t exist, but individual consumers don’t make that kind of calculation. —Zach

Does that mean the magazine in that room doesn’t have much value? Of course not.

The value of a publication is not defined by how much someone pays for it. It is more defined by the time a reader spends with it and how engaged they are with the edit.

How about publishers worry more about the quality of what they are writing as opposed to how much money they can make.

Let’s face it. The publishing bubble burst at the same time the housing market did. If the world of publishing would get back to spending more time focusing on their mission maybe they can start making money again.

Interesting promotion, but doesn’t this punch holes in the whole, “we should charge for news on the Web argument?” It’s certainly much cheaper to run a Web site than a printing press

But I think you’re right. This certainly shows that there are different economics at play here. And for better or for worse, while people value news more than coffee as a society, individuals would much rather pay for coffee. I can’t blame them either.

And let’s keep in mind that coffee doesn’t come plastered in advertisements, unlike news.