Commentary
Why Fake News Fears Will Not Lead To Spike In Subscriptions
- by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, November 27, 2019
Us Brits are the most worried in Europe about fake news -- but we're the least motivated to turn that concern into subscriptions to pay for decent journalism to be fact-checked by professional editors
working for reputable publishing companies.
That's the harsh takeaway from YouGov research that shows very nearly …
Sean Hargrave is MediaPost's London Editor. You can reach him at seanhargrave@btinternet.com.
Lets not obsess over this stat. If 15% of the market pays for digital news they trust that is good, and a very big number. In the glory days of newspapers, many readers didn't pay. They were the secondary and tertiary readers of papers paid for by others. "Paid" digital media can still be read by not-so-serious readers who just want a drip or two of the good stuff. And paid media does need to sample their wares to non-paying readers as a marketing tactic. And paid digital media has much lower distribution expenses than a paper paying for rolls of paper and delivery vehicles...so a far greater portion of the revenue can drop to the bottom line, or at least cover the fixed expense of news gathering and editing.