Free is not cheap

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

Being a believer in the adage that “there is no such thing as a free lunch”, I have always wondered where things were headed in the land of the web where so much content – even content that someone has to pay someone to generate – is free.

Would we just end up getting so engorged and bloated with all that free content that eventually we would all suffer from information indigestion and pass wind?

Now I notice that even Rupert Murdoch – no intended association here – is having a change of heart regarding free content.

Last week, announcing bleak earnings for News Corp which he owns, he said, “Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalising its ability to produce good reporting.

“The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news web sites.”

Hit by the recession and the move of advertisers to online media, newspapers are struggling to find a balance between their print and online business.

And it is clear that print can no longer sustain an online model where content is free and where advertising revenues remain miniscule.

Even for a numeric-phobic like me, the math just doesn’t add up. How can you keep investing in a better and better user experience because people want it but are not willing to pay for it?

Someone’s got to pay in the end and right now, it is publishers that are self-imploding under the combined weight of the recession and the free culture of the web.

But what are we as consumers prepared to pay for when it comes to media consumption?

Up to now, I have resisted paying for the online edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, which gives you some content free but if you want more, pay for it. The reason is, most of what I want, I can get it for free – and better – elsewhere.

It also galls me personally to pay for something that is somewhat of a monopoly and I’d rather pay for an underdog so I can help the cause of diversity and variety of opinion.

I am also not prepared to pay for news that speculates whether Lady Gaga is a man or a woman and was she/he showing signs of masculinity underneath the tight clothing or merely wearing a codpiece as urban legend has it that Mick Jagger used to wear.

What I might consider paying for is someone’s considered opinion on a subject I am curious about – for example, in the latest Vanity Fair, there is a most interesting article about Sarah Palin – “The Lies, the Meltdowns and the Moose-Size Ambitions” – because I am truly intrigued by this woman who burst onto the American political scene like a firecracker and then kinda exploded (or imploded), leaving a lot of smoke in her wake.

In short, I would pay to read someone whom I respected, whom I believed had credibility and authority, and whose opinions I believe would add value to my life.

If I used these as yardsticks, this would automatically exclude 99% of what’s out there on the web. But hey, that 1%, my friends, is worth holding out for.

Because that 1% could represent the difference between information indigestion and knowledge enhancement.

So remember, as you soak in all that free content, whether through Twitter, Facebook, Tech Crunch, Mashable or the Daily Mirror, free is not cheap.

It always costs more in the end.

Yeoh Siew Hoon is producer of WIT-Web in Travel- being held at Suntec Convention Centre in Singapore, October 20-23, alongside ITB Asia. Early bird booking for WIT is open until August 31 at US$688..