Boston Herald's gambit

The new era of writing columns dawned for me some years ago, when my humor column was canned by CNET. The reason? Not enough page views, they said. Writing online has its ups (global audience, interactivity with readers) and its downs (archives disappear, Mom doesn't know where or what it is). One of the advantages of print was that your boss didn't have a clue how many people were reading your column. Until now.

After much gnashing of teeth and playing with pay, or free, or some pay/some free, online newspapers seem determined to make a buck on more than archives and crosswords. The Boston Herald decided to make the leap by charging non-subscribers $4.95 per column per month (or $9.95 for three months, bless their hearts). One columnist, Cosmo Macero Jr., wondered if he'd have to resort to "sweeps week" tactics to make the grade. He jokingly warned in his column that "firetrucks, guns and reality TV plus lots and lots of sex" would replace his usually business punditry if sales were slow.

But after the laughter dies down, Macero is truly scared. "What has me spooked about the Herald's entry into the paid arena," he writes, "is the idea that my own work, in theory at least, might actually be measured by its individual sales appeal." Yikes. Poynter's Steve Outing quickly denounces the pricing scheme, saying he only pays marginally more for his entire newspaper delivered each month. PaidContent.org says newspapers have looked at charging for popular columnists as their "holy grail" but didn't have the will until now.

But early signs are bad for the Herald. Their paid test with popular columnist Howie Carr brought howls of protest from fans, and even Macero himself winced on his weblog at the negative feedback, wondering if readers could still get his column free through his blog (perish the thought!). And the Online Publishers Association -- for which I do contract work -- recently found that overall paid content numbers had gone down last quarter for the first time in awhile, though they still tallied $1.3 billion (including questionable "content" such as dating services). Macero can take heart that financial news has sold well, but on niche sites.

The OPA conversely has found that many of its members, top publishers such as The New York Times on the Web, Washingtonpost.com, etc., have been doing well selling ads along with some paid content. So why the rush to charge for columns? Once again, the business models are far from settled, everyone is making it up as they go along, and experiments abound. When/if micropayments catch on, the prospect of paying a dime for a columnist each day will be much more palatable for consumers. And then columnists will really feel the heat, bless our blabbering souls.

To catch a marcher

Whether you agree with a military action against Iraq or not, you have to marvel at the idea of a "virtual march," with protesters sending mass emails, faxes and phone calls to the White House and U.S. Congress last week. Because of so many busy signals and email bounces, the media couldn't even gauge how many people participated in the protest. As the San Jose Mercury News reported, it was a case of technology helping the lazy and busy constituents make their voice heard without walking in the streets.

Strangely enough, the European Union recently passed tough anti-terrorism rules that would make "illegal interference with an information system" a crime. Legal experts warned that the new rules don't differentiate between hackers or online protesters, making the "virtual march" an outlawed act in Europe. Paul Meller, reporting for IDG and for The New York Times on the matter, had one Italian parliamentarian call the rules "nonsense," saying further that it's "no accident" that ministers left out a protection for freedom of expression.

Still, one legal expert thought it was an oversight and an EU diplomat told Meller there was still a chance to modify the rules. As in libel laws, it's interesting to see how more restricted freedoms play out in Europe versus the U.S. The American freedom of speech, which many here take for granted, is still so foreign in many places abroad. But with growing anti-war sentiment in Europe, a change in the rules, and a new "virtual march" there, seem like a fait accomplis.

Quotable

"[U.S. Solicitor General Ted] Olson somehow wins the paradigm today and will possibly also win the case. He convinces most of the [Supreme Court] bench that there's no difference between refusing to stock Henry Miller and flipping on the porn filter and goes so far as to say that this statute somehow 'expands' free speech. While it's not at all clear to me how men attempting to research male-pattern baldness in public libraries can be stymied, while free speech wins the day, I'll hand this to Olson: He almost had me persuaded as well."

-- Dahlia Lithwick, writing a lively account in Slate about the first day of arguments for a law that makes public libraries use filters or lose funding. The libraries argue that filters hurt free speech because they block good sites as well as bad. Olson argued, convincingly, that adult patrons could simply ask librarians to turn off the filters.