There is no free lunch

The print media business is in the doldrums. Everyone wants information, but no one wants to pay for it. Even print advertising can no longer finance the media business, and profits have long since ceased to be generated. Online news, on the other hand, is booming. In Switzerland, reassuringly, it's still mainly news from news and media portals, not so much the "news" that is redistributed in "social media. But even the vast majority of information from media portals is freely consumed, not paid for.

There's no money to be made in advertising online either. You can only make money with advertising on the web if you can rely on millions of users and it therefore more or less doesn't matter how much - or little - a single advertising space costs. So the question for media makers is: How to make money? Not to get rich from it, but to be able to pay the journalists who produce the news, articles, background insights, reports and commentaries that are oh-so-loved to be read, seen and heard. There are already discussions about state benefits for independent media, because they are relevant to democracy ... a prospect of help that makes every journalist's independent stomach turn.

But let's turn away from managing deficiencies to what works: Information formats that are currently booming are moving images - i.e., every form of flickering report from "Foreign Journal" to "Blair Witch Project" - and info for listening. Podcasts in particular are enjoying great popularity. Because no one has time to read anymore and yet there are always plugs in their ears, a format that plays information onto the brain hard drive as it passes by is most welcome. On every website, there are contributions to listen to somewhere, and this is also the case with the Advertising Week.

But, crux in potency, the fact that you can now get articles and commentaries in your ear, recorded and edited by paid professionals, is not a reason for readers to pay, but is seen by them as a very personal embellishment of the free offer, which they use regularly as a matter of course. It's as if someone in Migros were to say, when buying apples, "Why don't you also take two pears and three oranges? Cost nothing." So there it is again, the question of how to earn money.

How about advertising in audio formats? Then the person using the podcast doesn't pay either, but someone third party can quickly put their new mattress in place while media quality is all around. Podcast advertising draws, say the advertisers; even if, let me be honest, they pretty much force the beautiful work of author and speaker to the ground. And from listeners one reads, "Crap mattress ads in every other podcast." So enthusiasm is in check. So, presumably, does the lifespan of this model.

E-books are an audio format that caused fear around the millennium. They were the end of the book, they said, which was nonsense even then. Today, e-books have become an additional form of reading that, unlike online news, is usually paid for - although not as much as a book. At the Frankfurt Book Fair, another answer to the question "how to make money?" was now being debated: Advertising in e-books. Technically no problem, but what do e-readers say? Dpr - the digital magazine for the media industry launched a flash poll on this: 43 percent of those responding were strictly against advertising in e-books, 19 percent didn't care, and 38 percent responded positively but tied their acceptance of e-book advertising to conditions, for example they only want advertising for books and placement at the end of the book.

I have a simple solution to the clash between unwanted advertising, content used for free, and the growing impossibility of making real money from real work: a clear separation between writing performance and advertising; and a fixed price for work performance used.

The importance of writing for the formation of human opinion and heart, and thus for the advancement of each individual, is non-negotiable, whether it is literature, or journalism. The British say, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." There is nothing free, even death costs life. That, too, is non-negotiable.

And in this case, dear reader, you have to pay for lunch. In return, you get to decide what you eat again.

Anne-Friederike Heinrich, Editor-in-Chief

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