Walls have the same bad reputation on the web as they do in history. They work for a while, usually to someone’s benefit and someone else’s dismay, and then they come crashing down.
A walled garden often serves as a safe haven to rapidly grow a business. In the 90s and early 2000s, we saw AOL expand to near synonymity with the Internet using a walled garden approach. When it stopped working, they faced a choice: Struggle to hold on, or open it up. They chose to keep the walls up, and now AOL is sailing into obscurity, to be quaintly remembered in VH1 specials about the 90s. The new champions of the tech industry now rally behind openness, or at least reluctantly accept it as the only path.
We’re now seeing an attempt at reversing the trend, with efforts spearheaded by Rupert Murdoch to build new walls around a garden that they deem to be too open: The news. They’ve seen walls crumble in the past and they don’t care. It’s not just posturing; they’re serious. They want to build walls (with payment-based entry) around the news.
The damnedest thing is: It just might work.
If enough credible news sources get on board, paying for news online could become the new way we consume news. Naturally there would be holdouts among consumers, but there have always been those who just pick up a used newspaper and read that. Social media and the Internet makes the news age faster, but let’s not forget that it already aged pretty fast through telephones and word of mouth. The biggest problem is getting enough sources under the banner of payment. Unlike AOL’s low quality, keyword-powered knockoff of the Internet, there’s real value in what Murdoch and co. supply.
Is it enough value to hold together a walled garden? I guess we’ll see. If they attain some small measure of success, they could recruit more news sources to their cause, eventually seeing even more success. The snowball could grow large enough to make paying for the news a smart choice for the consumer.
If it saves investigative journalism and the other services that well-paid journalism provides a society, then it just might be worth the price.
