I was determined I would never pay for it, after all when news is available everywhere else on the web for free (or at least ad-funded) what was the point in paying.

I have changed my mind.

If the News Corp had just taken Times Online, the merged site with content from the Times and Sunday Times and slapped a paywall on that – I wouldn’t have been even slightly interested.

Yes I would have missed reading Clarkson’s columns but somebody would have posted them somewhere else on the web anyway.

But they didn’t do that – they took the concept of a newspaper, a place to read the latest news, information and opinion and merged the best bits of that with the best of what the web can do to create two beautiful, interactive and easy to use websites.

They then packed it full of creative journalism and took a straight forward story and showed it in a different way.

Plus, £2 a week is a very good price, it’s at a level where I can probably pay for it without giving it too much thought – it’s about the same price as Spotify Premium.

Obviously I’d have prefered it to be free or to be packaged up with my Sky subscription but a company has the right to charge for its content – I would pay more than £2 a week for The Times and Sunday Times print editions.

Yes, in that instance I get the paper which costs to print – but a lot of people forget the actual cost of stories – just because you can’t touch something doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost to produce.

A new phone might cost £500 retail and it might work out at costing £100 to make – but you’re not factoring in the millions it cost in design, research and development – that all has to be paid for.

It’s the same with journalism – yes the online edition costs less to produce but there are still server costs, hosting costs,  software licensing costs etc…

Then there is the cost of journalism – it costs money to employ a journalist, a sub-editor, a designer, a photo editor and even more still if that journalist goes to cover a story in Afghanistan, Iraq or even Australia.

Photographers need to be paid for the photos posted with stories, freelancers need to be paid for the stories they write – it all costs money.

OK so I can throw together a blog and write stories for nothing – but I couldn’t do that if I didn’t have a full time job to put food on the table and a roof over my head – this is a hobby.

That’s why I’m going to pay for The Times – but if many more papers go down the same route, much like I’d only pay for one print paper a day – I’d have to pick and chose which online source I paid for.

Then – there’s always the BBC to fall back on if you don’t want to pay for Journalism

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But equally there are certain shows with their own top level site (Eastenders) and others sitting under the /programmes site (The Bubble).

The headlines out the Strategy Review have been surrounding the closure of BBC 6music – but equally the website will come under a large chop.

A large number of top level directories are being shut down, although it isn’t know which ones yet – either way my hope is the BBC has an archive plan in place for them.

The BBC have been gradually releasing aspects of their incredibly vast archive from music and video to text and pictures through a series of collections at bbc.co.uk/archive.

What I would like to see is that the same team of archivers and librarians take over control of keeping an archive of the BBC website – not that it just gets mothballed or worse – deleted.

There is some incredibly valuable social history content contained within the BBC site – ok there is a lot of crap as well – but the good stuff far outweighs the rubbish.

So, instead of hitting the delete button – create a new sub-directory at something like archive.bbc.co.uk and use that to keep a mirrored version of the sites that no longer fit on the new look, new focused BBC.co.uk.

You could then have all the pages within archive.bbc.co.uk have the same top banner that explains clearly that this is an ARCHIVE of the BBC website with links to the information and background behind the archive and the history of the BBC web archive.

OK you could use archive.org, most of the BBC site is on there anyway – but that isn’t a properly managed archive, that isn’t a site someone actually takes care over – it’s an automatically generated copy sitting in a database.

With my suggestion of a managed archive.bbc.co.uk each page would be fully functional (with interactivity removed for obvious reasons) and carefully looked after – images would work and dead links automatically redirected to a page explaining why.

An example of a site that shows how proper preservation can work is the BBC Politics 97 page – covering the massive all change election in 1997 that saw Tony Blair come to power.

The page is fully intact, navigation is as it was in 1997, images are all in place, all the sections are there – the only problem is you get a ‘forbidden’ error when you try to access the election page for that year.

In contrast the archive.org (and I love archive.org, it is a valuable resource) page has missing images, dodgy stylesheet, dead links and is VERY slow).

It would be such a shame if the BBC Politics page was lost forever, and just to stir up the Daily Express and Daily Mail reading classes out there – it would see an end to the BBC’s online Diana tribute.

The States of Jersey took the archive domain approach when they re-launched their site early this year. Instead of deleting the old, mainly static pages – they put them all under archive.gov.je.

You can see a list of the Top Level Directories on the BBC site by reading the new blog post by Erik Huggers – this doesn’t include re-directed URLs or those sitting under the News domain.

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The Independent Newspaper has an interesting way of making a bit of extra cash from their website – they’re restricting printing.

OK it might seem strange to want to print a story you’ve got right in front of you on the screen but being able to print something and then take it away to read later is a useful resource.

It’s also useful to be able to print if you want to hand it out as a resource at a talk/debate or lesson – so the idea of having ‘extra’ charges for extra prints isn’t that silly.

Unfortunately, this is the internet so they have to rely on a ‘good will’ model.

They’ve got a system in placefrom iCopyright that allows them to offer you alternatives for printing within a popup – but that wouldn’t stop you just copying and pasting.

You get the choice of a ‘free print’ where you can make up to five copies using your home or office printer for free (with an ad).

You can make an Instant print on your home printer with six or more copies from 25p to £1 per copy without ads.

You can get a quote for customised prints with your own logo for more than 100 copies on high quality paper.

Or you can have 50+ copies printed by them and sent to you within two business days, these cost 75p to £1.10 per copy – again with no adverts.

So the site itself, the articles on screen are free to view (at the moment) but printing on a bulk level will cost you money. Not sure this helps them or makes any real difference – but it is different.

Go live

Another approach might be to follow the trend currently being set by the music industry and go live, take your wares to the people.

Felix from Basement Jaxx told me that where once they would go on tour to support and promote their album – now they release an album to support a tour.

Newspapers could learn from this model, and this is one I think The Guardian seem to be catching on to.

This could be as simple as having live versions of their more popular podcasts with a paying audience or it could be by hosting full conferences.

It could be by funding talks or debates in regional theatres by controversial figures or even by running quiz nights with a star host.

Whatever approach is taken, whether it be to charge for full access to a newspaper website, to charge for premium content but leave news free or to go for an alternative like printing or live events – there seems to be plenty of choices.

I think in the end the approach that works, once the world of print newspapers is no longer viable on any serious scale, will be a combination of everything but the ‘all charge’ approach currently being favoured by News Corp.

I think what we’ll see is large multimedia news sites that charge for access to premium content like popular columnists, games and media content.

This could also include business specific content like financial data, academic resources and media industry jobs.

But at the same time make news and information content available for free and funded by advertising so that your average user, who won’t see any benefit in paying for news can still give you some revenue.

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The iPlayer team are now introducing a number of other features like linking to a specific point and chapters – next up I’d love to see comments and ratings.

But one of the shows missing from iPlayer, a major part of the BBC Radio 4 output is Desert Island Discs – as a format there is so much you could do with it online.

But there has always been a rights issue around it as it was created in a pre-digital era by someone obviously not under a BBC staff contract.

However that problem seems to be solved with an announcement on the BBC Radio 4 blog that not only will DDI be available on the iPlayer but will also eventually be a podcast and there will be some cool web features surrounding it.

The suggestion on the original Radio 4 blog post said: “we have plans to make the website an all-singing, all-dancing affair – encouraging people to compare their choices with the choices of castaways, looking at the most selected tracks etc.”

Which all sounds brilliant – but I hope it amounts to more than just a list of people that have been on the show with details of the songs the songs and selection – that is great content but not ‘all singing and all dancing’.

You can see an example of this approach in place on the pre-March 2009 Desert Island Discs BBC site.

That information still exists, it’s just that now you go to the /programme site for that edition of DID – which means that in theory this info exists in a data form somewhere.

So what I’d like to see is a cool web app – let me sign in with my BBC iD account, let me enter my choices (songs, book, luxury item) and then match me to the closest DID guest.

In fact this could be expanded to match me with other DID users with the data posted to my BBC iD profile page along with my iPlayer viewing et al.

And finally – on the new DID site, as well as this cool matching app, how about linking the song titles to Spotify so they can be listened to again while splitting out the music and making the interview portion available for ever.

If a link straight to spotify isn’t possible (for legal/impartial reasons) why not create a version of the Buyer’s Guide (currently being trialled with The Archers Audiobooks) and have a page for every song (tied to /music) with details of all legal online sources for that song including last.fm and Spotify.

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What this basically means is that, when these services roll out more widely across the BBC site (remembering that the BBC site is a lot more than one big website – it is a collection of fiefdoms, held tightly and with a passion by a number of different teams and departments.

The data sites like /programmes, /music, /iplayer (although that is really based around /programmes and in future /events basically allow for persistent and constant content in a human and machine readable way.

For example a BBC programme will have a unique idetifies such as, we’ll use mine for this example: p001d7vp.

If you follow the link underneath that code it will take you to the /programmes page for my show ‘BBC Jersey Introducing’. The show does have its own section of the BBC Jersey website and you could argue that, as it is part of the Introducing family – it could do with being in the Introducing look and feel – but as it is broadcast on BBC Radio Jersey – that’s how it looks.

However, what /programmes and this seperate of data, design and structure provides is the flexibility to use the data contained underneath p001d7vp in a number of different ways.

For example it could be tied into /music (and probably will in the future) so that I can publish my playlist, you can click on the bands I played, find out who else has played them, listen to that show, find out more about the band and their other songs – see where they are being played.

This could also then in future tie into /events and show you when they’re playing on BBC Shows or when they HAVE played on BBC Shows which in turn could be tied into the new /buyersguide (currently Archers only) to show where you can buy tracks from those sessions on the internet.

Which actually brings me on to the point of this blog post – the newly launched BBC Buyers Guide. Something that seems so logical, and would be logical if it wasn’t for the way the BBC is funded.

Basically it uses the standard PIP identifier for a show to tell you where you can buy audio/video/book content associated with that particular programme – although right now its only The Archers.

But don’t worry the BBC gets no kick backs from the companies they list. Mark Friend wrote on the BBC Internet Blog: “And just to reassure you suppliers do not make any payments to the BBC, either for listing as part of this service or for any click-throughs.”

Mark went on to say that: “We hope that the ‘Buyer’s Guide’ will go some way to providing users with the opportunity to find out more about their favourite BBC content.”

I’m guessing the plan is that I’ll be able to go to the /programmes page for say Top Gear and then from there I’ll see a Buyers Guide link where I can find out all the sites online selling downloads, books, dvd’s, music etc associated with that programme.

It’s basically a BBC only version of Kelkoo but without ANY recommendations – it is a list of all the places you can get the product online – at least all the places that meet a set of strict, pre-published criteria for listing.

These include purchasing security, data protection and customer support.

In fact there is more information on why this is a justified new area for the BBC to go into on the Buyer’s Guide about page.

The BBC’s Public Purposes state that “the BBC is a trusted guide to the digital world for the inexperienced or unsure, a safe place to be for the young, a reliable and accurate on-air and online source for the information seeker, and a challenging and involving partner for the more advanced user.”

Research conducted on behalf of the BBC revealed that buying and consuming media online can be a confusing and daunting experience for new users, particularly those with concerns around security and legality.

Those of us that are familiar with and regular users of sites like Audible or the iTunes store might find that a little odd but there are people, more than not, who aren’t comfortable buying things online or even necessarily know you CAN buy BBC programmes online.

My only concern is that it might bring the ‘why should I pay again for BBC content that I’ve paid for with my licence fee‘ lot out of the woodwork.

The response to that of course is that the BBC pays a fee for a limited number of plays of the content using the licence fee and has to pay again to do other things with it.

That money goes to writers, directors, musicians, songwriters, actors etc…

So if the Beeb wanted to make something (there are some exceptions to this – non scripted content, wholly BBC owned content – but not many) available to download for ever so you could do what you like with it, or wanted to replay it online for ever – they would have to pay again.

That isn’t really a great use of the licence fee – it would be much better to play it within the agreed limits (e.g. two airings and seven day catchup) and then make it available at a reasonable price for people that want it outside that window and to keep for everl.

As the /buyersguide site expands, and as all the other data sites expand – there’s going to be some interesting pieces of digital content coming out – show pages that pull in details of the number of plays a track has received and where, links to places you can buy a copy of live bands performing on the BBC and where else on the BBC they have or will be playing in the future.

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