[andymitchell]

It's notable that they expect to "lose 90%" of those subscribers when they end the current "£1 for a month" introductory offer, which is being pushed by a huge celebrity-endorsed advertising campaign on the London underground. So the actual figure is nearer 10,000 subscribers.

What IS interesting though is the potential to walk away from the advertising model to achieve less biased news. It's Murdoch, so it won't happen, but it would be a fascinating experiment. Shamelessly borrowing from Chomsky's "Propaganda Model" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model), mass media can never truly hold discussion & debate beyond the framework laid down by the interests of business. Whether journalists recognize it or not, there will always be limits on what they can say. Because to publish truly controversial material would be to terminate your public voice (i.e. no advertising, no revenue, no company).

The Web, with near-zero distribution costs, is the first time in history that it has become economical viable to escape advertising, by only needing to charge people a modest amount: the principle cost is investigative journalism, and there is a very helpful correlation between "well-connected Web user" and people who believe it is important to support an independent media outlet.

[rwmj]

But don't you think this niche is already filled by bloggers, who are (mostly) working for nothing.

Edit: My blog gets 500-1000 unique readers per day, roughly one post per day, which is now around 0.5% - 1% of the readership of a major newspaper's website.

[andymitchell]

I'm not convinced most bloggers start blogging with the assumption they'll do it for nothing :)

They think fame and riches! Or at least having the intellectual satisfaction of bestowing upon the world their opinion... but without revenue they cannot reach out to an audience, they cannot fund deep investigations, they cannot travel, and nor can they inspire confidence in whatever readership happens to stumble across them.

(The last one probably is solvable with a recommendation/aggregation service for new/independent journalists).

It is of course phenomenally hard to get people to pay for anything on the Web, especially news and opinions. But this is where it's worth drawing a comparison with Diaspora's funding: that $200,000 in donations is remarkable yet understandable, because a certain group of people want to support "big ideas" and freedoms... especially those with a political edge (and nothing is so overtly political as the freedom of the press, in Jefferson's words: "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.").