Yesterday, the New York Times announced its long awaited pay fence.  Today, we announced our investment in Kickstarter.  These two represent different models for sustaining efforts that are socially important but are having their previous financial models disrupted by the Internet: journalism in the case of the NY Times and creative projects on Kickstarter. 

While I am a fan of what the NY Times stands for and would like to see quality journalism exist going forward, I am not convinced that the pay fence is quite the right approach.  Adopting the Financial Times model of trying to get only the most frequent users to pay is definitely a step up from an all around and un-differentiated paywall.  It recognizes the fact that different readers derive varying degrees of benefit from reading the NY Times.  But it still does so in a rather crude fashion that feels, well – like a fence.  Something to keep you out rather than draw you in.  Btw, there is a terrific in-depth piece over at Nieman that everyone should read.

Kickstarter, on the other hand, is all about drawing you in.  It has a much more sophisticated model of allowing people to pick from many different levels in supporting a project. The benefits that are provided at each level provide for a much larger range of expression of personal benefit from a project.  It is important to note that the benefit is generally of an emotional nature – what one receives in return is not hard, transactional value but rather things that convey meaning.

Could a Kickstarter-like model work for the NY Times? We won’t really know until someone tries.  The model would need some tweaks, but by and large I believe it could succeed.  Instead of looking to fund the paper as a whole there might be projects around different individuals (e.g., columnists like Nick Kristof) or areas of inquiry (e.g. Afghanistan).  People could then support these at varying levels with benefits including such things as access to a group chat or even a sponsor by-line when the resulting pieces run.  I am still hoping that someone in journalism will experiment with a more innovative approach like that – and maybe it can still be the NY Times!