The quotes below come from a new blog called This Blog has no Title just Words and a Loon. I’m indirectly responsible for this. After posting my personal attack on Patrick Crozier the other day I rang him up to tell him not to take it personally, and it emerged that he had all sorts of other non-transport thoughts he wanted to blog and talked about starting Words and a Loon, although not by that name. For whatever difference it may have made I said go ahead, because I admire Patrick as a writer and will go there regularly. Patrick explained the thinking behind W&L in another non-transport posting on UK Transport. Then he started W&L, and it already has several bits including “The newspaper is dead”. At first I thought of just cutting and pasting the concluding paragraph, which has stuff like:
Newspapers exist (I presume) because it is not actually possible for one person to write the article, print it and distribute it to the millions of possible customers. There has to be some kind of division of labour. But the internet changes that.
But we’ve most of us had thoughts like that. I reckon these earlier ones are more illuminating.
I have no principled objection to paying for content. What I would object to is having to subscribe to masses of different publications. It might work for some of the bigger publications but if it comes to a choice of fumbling for my credit card for that one article in Peruvian Railways Monthly then it’s a non-starter.
What I would like to be able to do is to make ONE payment of, say, £20 a month and then be able to access everything.
Like all good libertarians, Patrick invents new businesses by just thinking aloud. He describes what they might look like, anyway. I don’t think he’s a loon.
