In the for-pay content business this week, many eyes are on Slovakia, of all places. Earlier this week, nine Slovak news and entertainment sites started charging for their content – together. The “Piano” system is similar to cable, in that a single fee gains access to multiple channels (as opposed to the recently introduced New York Times model whereby $15/month gets you access only to the Times). In this case, readers pay .99 euros a week/2.9 euros a month/29 euros a year.
SME, the biggest player, has so far just put certain sections and features behind the payment wall. According to Piano’s site, this is what readers will get for their money:
*Full access to Opinions section.
*Total participation in article discussion forums.
*Most popular broadsheet daily, most popular online news portal.
*Full access to the Opinions section..
*Flash version of the printed paper available at midnight daily from dennik.sme.sk.
*Full access to our entire article archive.
*Ability to comment on articles (3 comments a day are free).
*Teraz.sme.sk section – all the news in one place.
*Adding the listings to the classifieds service inzeraty.sme.sk.
*Professional medical help from online doctors at primar.sk.
*Make a complaint at sťažnosti.sme.sk.
*Package of premium information from motoring site Natankuj.sk.
The main news are still free, and the paper’s deputy editor told the Czech daily Mlada fronta DNES that the goal was to add paid content without affecting current ad income. Pravda, another popular paper, has also focused on asking readers to pay for the opinion section and full access to the article discussions.
I have to say that I’m pretty skeptical that people will pay to comment and discuss. The Mlada fronta article, which appeared on 3 May, quoted Jaroslav Kabele, director of Internet projects for Mafra (the publisher of Mlada fronta), as saying that they had debated whether to charge for discussions but figured it would probably turn off readers. He said that roughly 10 percent of site visitors read the discussion sections (I guess he means the comments under articles) and around one percent actively contribute.
Still, even with my doubts, given the track record of some of those involved in the venture, I wouldn’t bet against it working. Piano Media’s CEO Tomas Bella, in particular, has been one of the leading Internet media strategists in Central Europe, and perhaps Europe as a whole. While at SME, Slovakia’s biggest daily, he introduced the concept of reader blogs, allowing any visitor to the site to set up easily a blog on the SME platform. As you can see here, thousands have done so, creating a wealth of interesting content. Readers rate each others’ content (attaching “karma” points) and editors also highlight their favorites. Serious, important debates have taken place on the site over the years, and all that extra traffic has certainly converted over to more readers for the main SME site and an identity for SME as an innovative, new media pioneer. The site was also one of the first in this region to hand out smartphones to their reporters and encourage them to shoot video while out on stories.
I’m also pulling for this to work for other reasons: Tomas did some training for us a few years back and served as a judge at the Social Innovation Camp that we organized in Bratislava in 2009. He’s a good guy and also feels strongly about the use of the Internet to push social change (and not just figure out a way for newspapers to survive in the digital age).
November 22nd, 2012
3 Comments at "Piano Playing in Slovakia"
Tomas Bella and the “project” managed to shift the leading slovak papers from the fundamentals of journalism which is to inform the public and create a civic debate on actuall issues. Most of Slovaks activ in civic debate consider it a disgrace, me included.
Hi, thanks for your response. I can certainly understand the frustration of readers who have been used to visiting these sites for free, but I can also identify with the publishers of these papers needing to bring in new forms of income. Is this disgrace that you mention because they’ve decided to start charging or that they’ve decided to start charging for discussions, thereby limiting the debate? Jeremy
Since when has the fundamental principle of journalism ever been about informing the public and creating a civic debate? How naive must you be to think that? Journalism and the newspaper business has only ever been about securing revenue – as any operation in a capitalist market is. Piano is therefore just a natural progression – and a clever one at that. Boo hoo for you not getting free access, why do you feel that you have some God-given fundamental right to it anyway? Have you ever engaged with any of the literature relating to copyright and incentivisition arguments? (If genuinely not, check out Locke and go from there). Do you think you should be walking out of Borders (haha) with books for free? People don’t publish quality stuff for the shear hell of it, especially when they’ll be left out of pocket as a result of research and distribution costs. And before you trot out the tired old argument that the internet eliminates publishing costs, bear in mind that 99% of what gets published there is complete drivel (take your comment for instance, or for that matter, mine). For papers to keep delivering stuff that ‘informs the public and allows civic debate’, somebody’s gonna have to get paid – it’s the age old principle of ‘you don’t get something for nothing’ and even five year olds are able to grasp it. We’ve just been spoilt by having a free ride for so long…
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