Media Forum: Is it time for content charge?(Discussion)

Should newspapers revisit charging for online content?

The Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, loves Kindle 2. Well he would, wouldn't he? It's his baby. Kindle is a software and hardware platform for reading electronic books - and the new version of the reader kit, which is a bit bigger than a BlackBerry and retails at dollars 359, was launched with a fanfare back in February.

Kindle 2 will hold more than 1,000 books and, according to Bezos, will change the way we read. And he may be right - your correspondent spotted at least two people using Kindles on the Tube last week. In one rush-hour carriage, Kindle users equalled the number of Metro readers.

Bezos maintains that it will not just change our attitude to books - but will rewrite the rules of newspaper engagement. At last, we have a viable iPod for the written word - and there's a glimmer of hope that this might be the lifeline the industry needs. Kindle 2, for instance, comes complete with trial subscriptions to a clutch of newspapers, including The Washington Post - and if you like what you see, you can continue your relationship for an entirely reasonable dollars 10 a month.

In the US, there's much talk about the Middle Web - a domain that exists somewhere between the mobile phone and the laptop. The media owners that maximise their opportunities on the Middle Web, so the theory goes, will be the ones that survive.

Some analysts, not least the new-media people at some newspaper publishers, discount this theory entirely, pointing out that the growth of Kindle (or similar devices) ownership is likely to remain slow for the foreseeable future - and not all Kindle owners will become electronic newspaper subscribers.

But that, surely, is weary talk when the newspaper business seems in such terminal decline in the US and regional titles are closing by the day in the UK. Some publishers point out that most attempts to generate online newspaper subscription revenues have failed. But the time must be ripe for them to revisit this issue?