VietNamNet Bridge – It’s now not the time to discuss whether to
charge fees for online news or not, because the answer is obvious: newswires
will have to collect fees, if they want to exist and develop.
When mentioning the fee
collection for e-versions of newspapers, Le Quoc Minh, Editor in Chief of
Vietnam Plus, the online newspaper belonging to the Vietnam News Agency, said
he may face the strong opposition from readers and colleagues when making such
a suggestion. However, Minh believes that this is a necessary thing publishers
need to do to improve the news quality and develop.
Until the first half of 2000s,
the world was still in two minds about charging fees for online news. At that
time, experts warned that if press agencies collected fees, they would lose
readers.
The US Wall Street Journal began
collecting fees in 1997. It was estimated that by mid 2007, one million people
had accepted to pay money to read the e-version of the newspaper.
In September 2005, New York Times
also began charging service fees. However, it later canceled the service in
September 2007, after realizing that the fees collected were not big enough to
offset the decreases in the revenue from potential ads it could have had with
the free websites.
The British--The Times began
collecting fee in 2010, though this was a general news website, with no
in-depth analyses. One month later, The Times had 105,000 payers for news, but
it lost 4 million readers a month.
However, newswires have still been
insisting on the necessity to collect fees from readers.
New York Times, for example, has
charged fees again since March 2011, but it has applied some new policies.
Until April 2012, readers were allowed to read 20 pieces of news every month
before they had to pay fees. Since April 2012, the number of free pieces of
news has reduced to 10.
Statistics showed that 224,000
readers accepted to pay fees in the first three months. To date, the newspaper
has got 470,000 subscribers who have to pay 15-35 dollars a month for reading
the e-version of the newspaper.
Charging fees in Vietnam, why not?
It is obviously a growing
tendency in the world that people have to pay for online news service. However,
it is still unclear when the tendency would be growing in Vietnam.
Analysts say this would depend on
many factors, including the demand, the content quality and the affordability
of readers.
No online newspaper has
officially charged fees for online news in Vietnam. However, some newspapers
have been just starting the plans to collect fees.
Baomoi.com, for example, has
begun collecting fees for the “hot news” of the mobile version, charging 5000
dong per piece of news, even though these are not the news produced by
Baomoi.com itself.
According to Minh, e-newspapers
have been mushrooming. However, the newspapers cannot earn much from
advertisements. He believes that the ad revenue growth rate is no more than
30-40 percent per annum. Meanwhile, no more than five e-newspapers can earn 1
million dollars a year from ads.
In general, enterprises would
post ad pieces on big and well known newspapers, even though they have to pay
high for the posting. As such, smaller newspapers have to earn their living by
selling contents and have loyal readers.
Minh believes that charging fees
for online news would be feasible, if readers can receive valuable news. He
said readers would be ready to pay for services, provided that the services can
satisfy them.
Binh Minh
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