Political Penndit | The Declaration of Wikindependence

We citizens of the digital age hold these truths to be self-evident, that most young adults get their news online, that they are endowed by their internet service provider with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the unlimited access to information and the pursuit of never having to pay a cent for it.

I write this — shall we call it? — "Declaration of Wikindependence" in response to The New York Times’ decision to adopt a metered paywall next year to charge readers of its web site. After a limited number of free articles each month, visitors to nytimes.com will be required to pay a fee (amount to be determined) to access the web site.

This decision illustrates the hostility we find on the internet between content creators and consumers. The former need money to continue producing its content; the latter want (and are used to) accessing it for free.

Stewart Brand summarized the conflict in his 1988 book The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT: “Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine — too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient.”

That so much of the internet is free is a major grievance for newspapers. Not only are readers getting their content online without paying, but advertisers who had once bought classified listings migrated en masse to the free Craigslist.

A March 2008 article in Wired magazine by Editor-in-Chief Chris Anderson explored the concept of “freeconomics.” “Once a marketing gimmick, free has emerged as a full-fledged economy,” he wrote. “It’s now clear that practically everything Web technology touches starts down the path to gratis, at least as far as we consumers are concerned.”

Although the Times is facing tremendous financial pressure to find new sources of revenue, charging for its online content is not a sustainable business model. For the most part, news content is interchangeable. We can get virtually the same story from countless other sources — television, other newspapers’ web sites and (perhaps the biggest threat of all) blogs. Why pay for something that is free elsewhere?

The content that is unique to the Times and that consumers may be willing to pay for are its opinions and news analyses. But the newspaper already tried to charge for those a few years ago when it charged for access to its opinion columns online. The columnists themselves criticized this policy, claiming a downturn in readership.

And with readership among young adults at shockingly low levels, the Times needs all the readers it can get. In 1971, the average weekday-newspaper readership among 18-to-24 year olds was 73.1 percent, according to the Newspaper Association of America; by 2007, this number had plummeted to 33.9 percent. In contrast, 73 percent of people reported using the internet to get news, according to a 2008 Pew Internet & American Life Project tracking survey.

Making young adults pay for content we are used to receiving for free will only further alienate us from newspapers. And the Times will not be able to survive if our generation does not replace its older readers.

However, there are some among us who will continue to read nytimes.com next year when it is no longer free online. “I read The New York Times because the content is so remarkable,” said Wharton sophomore Erin Silk. “I would get breaking news from sites that were free, but for investigative pieces, I would read the Times.”

The Times Company Chairman and newspaper publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said the future of online news will be a paid-subscription model. “This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is going,” he said.

If only Sulzberger knew I read this quote, initially published in a Times article, on The Huffington Post — for free. Prameet Kumar is a Wharton sophomore from New York. His e-mail address is kumar@dailypennsylvanian.com. Political Penndit appears on Wednesdays.

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