Scott Kirsner (columnist at the Boston Globe and contributing editor to Wired and FastCompany…the type of guy freelancers like me envy) responds in an email to my explanation of why I urge people to subscribe to Salon but bash the Globe for tucking their online articles away in a for-pay archive. He writes:

In my mind, if you want an organization to survive – whether it is a for-profit one like Salon or the Globe or a non-profit like the American Heart Association – it makes sense to financially support it.

The reason the Globe has been existent since 1872, supporting public discourse etc, is that it has figured out how to reliably make money over that period.

When we started the Web site in 1995, there was no government agency giving us a grant to put the Globe’s material online, for free. One of the things that subsidizes the cost of putting the content online with no cost to readers – even if only for a few days – is the archives.

I promise you that it is not “almost free” to run vast databases of stories, with credit card verification, etc. (And to pay the technicians to make sure that the servers remain up and available.) You’re right that the actual cost of delivering each story is probably not $2.95, but that cost does subsidize a lot of stuff that goes on line for free, even if only temporarily.

An interesting question to ask is what will happen to newspapers that perennially lose money on their Web operations. I don’t think it would be such a wild prediction to say that they would either shut them down, or, if they didn’t, see the losses from their Web operation begin to hurt the print operation – forcing them to fire reporters, editors, photographers, etc.

Given all the statistics about declines in newspaper readership by young people, the high cost of printing and delivering the things, and the revenue threat from online job sites, I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that newspapers like the Globe are institutions that will survive forever and ever regardless of whether their businesses are run intelligently.

I suspect I won’t change your opinion on this, but just thought I would write and contribute to the conversation…

I know I’m never going to win an argument with Scott because he fights dirty by being right. Nevertheless…

Three principles here conflict for me. First, I believe in people making money on the Web. Second, newspapers have a special obligation to make their information widely available because that is good for our democracy. Third, if you make my web site look bad, your sites’ servers should be terminally infected with head lice. So, how does the Globe policy stack up to these three Prime Directives? (Yeah, I know you can’t really have three prime directives…)

First, the Globe should take in money on the Web. And it does. It runs ads. It markets itself. It lets people buy tickets from season ticket holders. Great! Do these defray the cost of the Web site? Scott’s message implies not.

So, should the Globe now do whatever it has to in order to break even on the Web? Of course not. It wouldn’t run a porn-for-pay service. The Second Principle (oh lordy, now I’m even capitalizing myself) suggests that the paper has a social responsibility to keep its content available to the citizenry. Having to pay to re-read the paper makes our democracy just a little bit worse. The Globe should make money using the well-known SOW technique: Some Other Way.

Third, putting up a link and then taking it down breaks the Web.

So, let’s be positive. What would I suggest the Globe do in order to satisfy these contradictory principles? It’s obvious: I dunno.

Or, possibly: Charge for complete online access to today’s newspaper, but keep access to previous issues free. And have Scott become the editor of an online magazine called “The Boston Globe Presents THE HUB” that has added-value content you can’t get anywhere else, including some kickass weblogs by Globe reporters. Like Salon. Yeah, easy for me to say. But I can’t pretend to give the Globe a business plan; I don’t know enough about their business. All I can do as a reader and citizen is thank them for the good they do and gripe if their values don’t align with mine. And that’s what I’m doing.

I understand that newspapers are in trouble. But of all the ways to subsidize their operations, putting a turnstile in front of the archives is among the worst.

And, I know I am a kook for believing this, but these problems are only temporary. As soon as $300 ebook hardware with high enough resolution becomes a standard part of every school kid’s equipment, newspapers will start to jettison the mass distribution of their print versions. It’s only a few years away. At that point, I will be delighted to subscribe to The Globe Online at the current print price. Without the cost of printing and delivering a forest of paper every day, I sincerely hope The Globe will be richer than Croesus.

I love the Globe. I read its inky pages every day. Long may they crinkle! And if I thought that the only way for the Globe to stay online was to charge $3.00 to read an article in their archive, I’d shut up about it. But we’re looking at a balancing act and IMO the Globe has underestimated the importance of keeping our recent past present to us.

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It is with only a trace of irony that I point out that Scott’s columns, including the recent one on weblogs that started this back-and-forth, are archived for free at digitalmass.com, a boston.com site.

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