Selling access
A newspaper in Wisconsin is charging people for the right to hang out with the newspaper's executives, a practice described in other contexts -- Washington, say, -- as selling access.
My longtime friend and former co-worker Forrest Brown, now a page designer at The Charlotte Observer, has a very funny, and very true-to-life, account of what buyers would be getting for their money if the Observer sold access to him.
I get paid in part to read blogs. The only thing weirder than that would be to charge someone to watch me do it. Not that I wouldn't entertain the notion -- particularly if I got a cut. We're still wrestling with the whole notion of what the Public Square's business model ultimately will look like, and I think the only appropriate position to take at this point is that nothing is off the table.*
*(If your Irony Alert isn't buzzing, please get it checked. Just sayin'.)
Comments (4)
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Isn't paying for access what Clinton started and Bush made into an art form?
Posted on March 18, 2005 6:28 PM
Wow, Forrest 'made it his own' - all for a mere $49.95 - right down to the potty breaks. Where do I sign up? Funny piece.
Posted on March 19, 2005 11:06 AM
Sue, I think it goes at least as far back as the Nixon years.
Posted on March 29, 2005 10:07 AM
I wish you success with your experiment. As a retired 31 year high school English teacher, my strong bias was and still is to engage people to participate in the great conversation newspapers provide. I taught lessons about Addison and Steele and the Tatler and the Spectator. I loved their goal "to make goodness fashionable." Ben Franklin went to "college" reading Addison and Steele. The middle class has nothing to do with money. It emerged with and from newspapers. The middle class is an informed group who have decided to participate in society not simply live in the society. The middle class is a attitude that change is possible and that the middle class can and must effect that change. For millions of Americans newspapers, magazines, and TV news are their "college." I have bookmarked your site. Good Luck.
Posted on March 31, 2005 4:39 AM