Twitter debate on how to fund newspapers - Live @

Posted by Emma Heald on February 19, 2009 at 5:17 PM

Everybody's talking about Twitter: the social media tool that is being embraced by journalists and politicians amongst others for its professional potential. Today an impassioned debate on how to fund news has been taking place on the site. Participants have been addressing many issues, from micropayments to crowd funding, non-profit journalism to the value of advertising  agencies. Host Alexandre Gamela, a Portuguese journalist and media blogger posed questions such as "does no one want to pay for anything anymore?" and "what can newspapers learn from the music industry?" See source link to follow the feed, and Journalism.co.uk for more commentary.

There was great debate over whether anybody will be willing to pay for online news, and whether it is even appropriate that they should be asked to pay. The general agreement seemed to be that people will not pay for news if there is an option to get it free: a logical conclusion, and one which newspapers should definitely make note of if they are to progress down the paid online content road.