• Portfolio, Tuesday, February 10, 2009 9:18 AM

Micropayments-as-the-savior-of-journalism meme seems to have taken off of late, especially in discussions about The New York Times. The idea is that people would pay small sums for articles or for limited subscriptions, similar to how they buy music on iTunes.

But not everyone is convinced. There's enormous amounts of journalism available for free, much of it better than the NYT's, say critics. A newspaper subscription firewall might only serve to help drive Internet traffic to someone better -- an aggregator, perhaps, which finds the best free coverage of every story.

A better payment idea is to sell shares to subscribers. It raises new permanent capital while ensuring that the incentives of the owners are to put out the best possible journalism. "I'd happily buy a couple of dozen voting shares [to the NYT] tomorrow, even if they lost their voting rights when I transferred them, or I wasn't allowed to sell them at all," says industry blogger Felix Salmon.

Voluntary payments are no problem. The difficulty comes when you try to force people to pay, then customers tend to disappear with startling rapidity.

Read the whole story at Portfolio »