Back to the drawing board…

Earlier this week, Robert Leigh of The Guardian put forward the idea of imposing a monthly £2 levy on broadband subscriptions in order to subsidise the costs of (print) investigative journalism.  Daft as it may seem, the idea was welcomed by Leigh’s (normally sensible) colleague on The Guardian, Roy Greenslade. 

I have to admit that I’m mildly sympathetic to the idea: like Leigh, I worry about a world in which, absent the investigative writing of commercial journalism, “wwe’ll just get the timid BBC on the one hand, and superficial junk on the other”.  But the £2 broadband levy simply won’t do as a remedy: aside from its obvious distribution concerns (who wants to subsidize Murdoch?), the levy is patently in the wrong place: any economic transfer should be attached to usage, not general subscriptions.  In other words, I agree with Mr. Leigh’s critics who respond with an ‘adapt or die’ message: the challenge is for the quality press to come up with some kind of ‘pay wall’ that meets their needs and is fit for purpose. 

But the broader point is that newspaper proprietors are not alone in struggling to find an economic model that continues to reward their investment: the providers of broadband infrastructure, particularly those investing in the expensive access network, are desperate to find ways of sharing their costs with others in the broadband value chain.  So far, all such attempts have been rebuffed – typically on grounds of net neutrality – but the pursuit of new business models is a healthy sign of market development and should not be discouraged.