People, like me, who don’t want to see ads don’t have to.

There are only two ways to solve this (both for NPR and the newspapers):

Pure subscription, as many medical and scientific journals already do, and as the Wall Street Journal also does.

Automatic micropayments. Internet micropayment schemes have been around for a decade or more but none of them have caught on because they are cumbersome, make people nervous about security, and have too much overhead.

This last point is worth noting: The NPR program Car Talk has literally millions of listeners and is cheap to produce. So in theory the per-listener cost of one episode of Car Talk is a fraction of a cent. Internet micropayment systems have too high a transaction cost to handle that – Even if the listener paid 1 cent per show the majority of that money would go the to micropayment system, not to mention the cost of the distribution bandwidth!

…Same thing with a newspaper article. What’s the production cost of one newspaper article divided by all the people who would read it? Again, it might be a fraction of a cent. Currently there’s no cheap way to bill for that.

So a subscription model seems like the only feasible model, but you must have VERY compelling content. I am a subscriber to the Wall Street Journal, and several scientific research journals, but I can’t imagine any other daily newspaper I’d be willing to subscribe to with their current content.

1. robots.txt is only advisory – it’s not enforceable and any web-bot/web-crawler is free to ignore it.

2. All the traffic that Google sends to Murdoch’s sites don’t help Murdoch pay his reporters unless that traffic creates revenue. Most of us heavy-users of the web have extremely strong ad-blockers. I hardly EVER see ads on websites I frequent so how are they supposed to make money off of me? (and even if I saw an ad it would never make me buy something, so what’s the point of seeing it?)

3. NPR also relies on an anachronistic funding model. I consume a lot of NPR content but I consume ALL of it on the internet, by going to the sites where the particular show is produced. I have no idea what “my local” NPR affiliates, WBUR and WGBH, actually carry because I don’t listen to them! I send them money out of pity or charity, but in the internet age geography is irrelevant. I don’t feel any “closer” to WBUR than I do to WAMU in Washington or WBEZ in Chicago. The idea of local station membership is meaningless in the internet age and NPR will face the same problems as newspapers.

Tom Ashbrook, I know you’ve got your own system in place, but using the mute button might be the best way to regulate guests such as this once the program is underway and they refuse to contain themselves. I’d say you should reserve the right to apply that level of control over your guests in advance; maybe the more abusive ones would manage themselves a bit better—who knows.

Too bad this topic didn’t get a civilized airing. I made it to minute 38 of 45, but had stopped “listening” even sooner.

Jeff Jarvis, Michael Wolff, and Steven Brill — I haven’t heard such pompous, demeaning, disdainful arrogance in quite a long time. You could have scarcely shown more contempt for your audience and everyone else in the conversation, and I’m not sure you once bothered to hear anything anyone said. You are all complete disgraces to knowledge and discourse, and you’ve got utterly zero credibility with me now. I will be sure to speak ill of you and your ventures at every opportunity and in every relevant venue. Shame on you, and please stay away from NPR — you are suitable for little more than the likes of Fox News and MSNBC.

Good grief, it was like listening to a bunch of squabbling 6th graders.

I have heard other guests on public radio programs (On Point and others) who interrupted and talked over others, but never have I heard anyone as bad as this.

Again, if I had wanted this, I would have turned to Fox News, not public radio.

If independent journalists become viable and can make a living BASED on their reporting then it will improve the news for the viewer. At that level, costs can be managed more efficiently.
I think at the level Murdoch operates, he won’t be able to profit from the new possible model, so he is trying to eek out what he can, now. It makes sense to me and probably to many he employs.
~J

That’s a testament to how arrogant, inappropriate, and ridiculous his supposedly “expert” guests were on the show. Especially Michael Wolf. I expect he had never heard the show before and came in with a different set of expectations. OnPoint is great because it features intelligent, well-spoken true experts in a civil discussion. This guy was just a self-promoting, arrogant, all-around jerk.

I, too, have never been moved to comment on the show before this. It was pretty much a trainwreck. Tom kept treating Mr. Wolf with respect even when he had already shown that he deserved none.