Publication firewalls are coming down.

Can this be a good thing?

For most of us newsletter people, we first became aware of the existence of the internet about 15 years ago.

And from those early days there has been a constant tension between the "information wants to be free" crowd and those of us whose first impulse was "How can we use this thing to sell something?"

In October 1994 I attended the DMA conference in San Francisco. The session on internet marketing opportunities was SRO, people sitting on the floor, etc. The presenters showed slides of website pages and, I suspect like many others there, I didn't understand exactly what I was looking at.

During the same week, however, I went to dinner with two Ph.D. candidates who lectured me in no uncertain terms that the internet was the sole preserve of the academic community and would or should never be soiled by commerce (which shows academics aren't always right).

Publishers get on board

So, undaunted, newsletter publishers moved into the new area of online marketing and delivery. There may have been exceptions, but collectively we learned subscribers weren't interested in paying more for it, despite all our explanations about the advantages of speed, convenience and archival functions. We know that the costs of printing and postage are not really a major part of the expense of publishing, but our readers don't.

For a while it appeared that the only people who could make money online were those offering money or porn. (DM consultant Barbara Kaplowitz once remarked that she was being bombarded with e-mails trying to sell her a smaller mortgage and a bigger penis. She said she was particularly annoyed because she had neither.)

As things appeared to settle down, newsletter publishers in general were pretty stingy with what they gave away online. Many offered a

free issue, online or print, some a few articles, some literally nothing for nothing. Dennis Wuycik, publisher of the ACC Sports Journal (formerly The Poop Sheet), said, "I kept being approached by website owners who wanted to add my content to their site. I didn't understand. My information is what I have to sell."

More and more free content

But now the worm appears to be turning. Big names in publishing are throwing in the towel on attempting to limit free access to their content. The New York Times ended its policy of charging for access to their op-ed columnists. The Economist and the Financial Times have done so, too, and Atlantic magazine has become the latest, although rumors are about that the Wall Street Journal, an early success in selling content online, may join them. The Atlantic's editor-in-chief said their website, Atlantic.com, had "languished for years because it was used mainly as a marketing tool for the print product." Sound familiar?

How does this work?

How does this work for these publishers? They have vast amounts (compared to newsletter publishers) of editorial material available. The FT allows browsers to read up to 30 articles a month without subscribing. That's a fraction of their content, but is probably about equal to the entire volume of a biweekly newsletter. And in the time it might take to "browse" one lengthy article in The Economist, you could probably read an entire newsletter issue.

This free content will draw visitors to see paid ads and allow publishers to collect e-mail addresses to use to market their other paid products. Fine, if you have all those "other products."

Those "other products"

If you don't have those "other products"--commonly called "one shots"--you might seriously consider adding them--white papers, e-mail alerts, audio conferences, etc.--if for no other reason than to have lower price points with which to lure prospects into an interactive relationship.

In DM News, Justin Smith of Atlantic Consumer Media says they think the new strategy will help The Atlantic increase its audience both online and in print. "Also, lowering the firewall doesn't preclude developing web-based subscription products in the future for either web or print readers," Smith says.

I can see this as a business model that could also be successful for the largest newsletter publishers, those with a wide variety of products.

It appears less attractive to publishers like Wuycik, who have only a limited number of products, and information is what they sell. In just the past year or two I've interviewed several relatively new publishers who have started from scratch and succeeded using what now appears to be the "old model"--a one- or two-person operation starting in both print and online and then trying to expand their online offerings.

For them life may become more difficult as they face prospects who may be thinking, "NY Times, FT, Economist, all free, but for this thing, I need to pay?"