But the manager is right. There is no way to sell a single article 300 times a year to the same person. A lot easier to sell a subscription to 1/300th of people.
The other problem: if you just want to know what is happening, go to any news discussion site or board and click on the discussion. Comments will often contain long quotes and/or summaries of the articles. Plus major news networks all summarize articles: “CNN says Reuters says the NYT reported XYZ”. Selling a single article is a race to the bottom.
I can see going back to the original model though: for $5-10 you can buy an edition: today’s bundle of articles. Much better value for the buyer, easier than $1 micropayments. This of course requires some kind of clever balance between live updating breaking news and having a well defined set of articles to include in the edition.
The other problem: if you just want to know what is happening, go to any news discussion site or board and click on the discussion. Comments will often contain long quotes and/or summaries of the articles. Plus major news networks all summarize articles: “CNN says Reuters says the NYT reported XYZ”. Selling a single article is a race to the bottom.
I can see going back to the original model though: for $5-10 you can buy an edition: today’s bundle of articles. Much better value for the buyer, easier than $1 micropayments. This of course requires some kind of clever balance between live updating breaking news and having a well defined set of articles to include in the edition.