Online news must be free

Bronwyn Nortje’s article (Supporting free internet content is a vote for fake news mongers, January 12) made some interesting points but unfortunately commits the standard media fault of saying the only solution to fake news is payment. As a long-standing member of the Internet Society, I can remember the debate about the freedom of the internet when the simple academic view was that it should always be a free service aimed at and ensuring the spread of knowledge. We all know it is a utopian dream because the spread of the internet has been beyond what any of us believed would happen.

Unfortunately, the ready access to blogs and social networking generally means news content is free. Consumers know what has happened long before the media publishes it. It may not always be accurate or unbiased, but since when were traditional media accurate and unbiased? If it is not free, it will not get consumed other than by a diminishing number of “pure news readers”. Most consumers of news want sensationalism. The sales of traditional titles aimed at the popular consumer, here and in the rest of the world, prove it. It’s about entertainment — the content is incidental for many readers.

No, for news to be non-fake, it needs to be accurate, readily available and free. This means that traditional journalism and media need to change. We are going to have to see an increasing dependence on agencies and shared journalist pools. Maybe new forms of writing will emerge, possibly where a research journalist produces a skeleton or framework, sells it to numerous publishers, and jobbing journalists write it into the appropriate format for the publication concerned.

This will have to be paid for by means of a better advertising model, possibly incentive based, and lower costs. Electronic publishers seem to think they can charge the same for an electronic book as for a hard copy, thereby gaining from the economies of scale at the expense of the consumer. This will change.

Ms Nortje, the media needs to develop new models and think out of the box, because pushing the existing approach will ensure failure. The traditional media line of “make the bastards pay” will not work. Sorry.

Henry Watermeyer

Lyndhurst