Reasons to Buy News

Eric Schmidt and Rupert Murdoch are (indirectly'ish) debating whether or not people will pay for news.  Of course they will.  Sometimes.  Lost in all the discussions about subscription revenue versus ad revenue, payment platforms, and federal bailouts is a more fundamental question:  Why would someone pay for news?

Run your favorite title through this "Reasons-to-Pay Gamut," and place your bets on their success or failure as paid content:

• Unique Content - Is this news I can get everywhere equally easily?  I can get NFL coverage in dozens of places, but how many papers carry local high school football?  401(k) reconstruction stories are everywhere, but how many places provide the local depth of American City's business journals?
  
• The Right Package - The New York Times is free online.  But people buy it on their Kindle.  Arguably a worse product (no color, multimedia, archives, etc.), but wrap it up the way people want, and they'll pay for it.
• Be Reliable -Dan Rather.  Nobody's willing to pay for something - either with cash or attention - that they don't trust.
  
• Give Me Cachet - The Economist publishes free online.  And 800K people in North America buy the same articles in the magazine for $100+/year.  How many of them simply want to be seen reading The Economist?  Or have it on their reception area coffee table?
  
• Let Me Pay with Other People's Money - Variety is going back behind a paywall.  How many subscribers aren't going to expense-report their subscriptions?  And to the extent that subscriptions are deductible business expenses, you're buying at a 30% discount anyway.

Here's a quick five.  There are plenty of others no doubt, but it's tough to see people paying for news that runs afoul of more than one or two of the above.