Web Strategy

To Pay or Not to Pay ... That is the Changing Question

Headshot of Ron Matejko
By Ron Matejko

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In an era, where citizen “journalists,” aggregators and content farms threaten to turn the information media companies produce into a commodity, the importance of protecting premium content is greater than ever.

That point was made in my last column when I expressed confusion about why some news organizations dropped their paywall, so visitors to their websites could read coverage about the Boston Marathon bombings. If a business model is predicated around subscriptions to your content, why abandon that when the demand for your information is at its highest?

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For years, sports media outlets, and probably non-sports as well, have chased one of the editorial holy grails that remained elusive to all—breaking the story about the first active professional athlete in one of the four major sports to come out as gay.

Now,

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Headshot of Ron Matejko

Ron Matejko

Ron Matejko is the President of Phoenix, Ariz.-based MVP Media, an award-winning digital publishing company. Matejko has 16 years of publishing experience in print, Web and mobile and has worked on the staff of two award-winning publications.

MVP Media publishes MVP Magazine, the first interactive sports publication, which won a Bronze 2010 Digital Magazine Award for Best Sports Magazine, besting entrants from 26 countries around the world, and was a finalist for Designer of the Year. MVP Media will launch its own magazines on the iPad in 2011.

MVP Media also helps existing publishers convert their print products into dynamic publications for the web and tablets. Visit the MVP Magazine website at www.mvptoday.com. Contact Ron by e-mail at ron@mvptoday.com, or connect with him on LinkedIn or on Twitter @mvp_media.

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