Viitorul amazonian al presei?! Much of the media world has been waiting with bated breath since Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for $250 million last year, eager to see some sign of the Amazon founder and CEO’s hand at work. The first tangible evidence appeared on Tuesday, when the newspaper announced a major national subscription partnership that will offer free digital access to readers of other newspapers in major U.S. cities. But wait, doesn’t this article say the Post is giving free access to its content to other newspapers? Here is where Coasean contracting, and symmetry of externalities, enters the picture. WaPo giving free access to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, or vice versa, end up being pretty much the same thing (over time, with renegotiations) in a world of Coasean contracting. WaPo will end up becoming the hub and the others will be feeder spokes, with Wapo paying a fraction of the cost for the content it receives from each one. (And I suspect there will be no easy “cross-access” of say the Minneapolis paper to the Pittsburgh paper, and so on, to limit the evolution of a rival hub.) Furthermore, at least in the short run, the marketing work is being done by other newspapers, not by WaPo. Over time the WaPo web site can buy bits of content from Le Monde and FAZ (translated by software programs, of course), The Guardian, The (London) Times, various local U.S. papers, London Review of Books, Boston Review, and who knows where else? Probably only a few outlets, such as WSJ and NYT, will refuse to sell content to them at cut-rate prices.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Mar 2014 08:02:51 +0000
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