Too Late, Ctd

Contra Walter Isaacson, Clay Shirky explains why micro-payments won't work:

The invocation of micropayments involves a displaced fantasy that the publishers of digital content can re-assert control over we unruly users in a media environment with low barriers to entry for competition. News that this has been tried many times in the past and has not worked is unwelcome precisely because if small payment systems won’t save existing publishers in their current form, there might not be a way to save existing publishers in their current form (an outcome generally regarded as unthinkable by existing publishers.)

Kinsley weighs in:

Micropayment advocates imagine extracting as much as $2 a month from readers. The Times sells just over a million daily papers. If every one of those million buyers went online and paid $2 a month, that would be $24 million a year. Even with the economic crisis, paper and digital advertising in The Times brought in about $1 billion last year. Circulation brought in $668 million. Two bucks per reader per month is not going to save newspapers.

Walter Isaacson is a wonderful writer and truly decent human being, but this piece was so out-of-it one wonders whether Time's editors have the slightest clue about new media.