"Show Me the Value!!"

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” — Warren Buffett

There’s one question I get about LedeWire more than any other: “Won’t micropayments cannibalize our subscriptions?”

I get why that fear shows up. Subscriptions have been the lifeline. The notion of potentially disrupting that lifeline is unsettling.  

But my view is this: your work is more valuable than you believe.  Humans crave and value information and knowledge (if you’re not sure on that point look at a chart of tuition costs over the past couple decades).  Your loyal readers aren’t looking for an excuse to leave, they’re not there because you tricked them into paying more for your content than it’s worth to them. They see value in the information and knowledge you offer.  The question isn’t whether dedicated readers will abandon you for a more expensive, piecemeal option. The real question is how many people you don’t reach because the only door you offer says “monthly commitment.”

Think about the reader who follows you on social media, sees people sharing your pieces, but keeps hitting the paywall and walking away. They’re curious. They are there for a reason and you’ve already built some credibility with them.   But right now, for one reason or another, they see that binary choice of subscribe or nothing and they are forced to choose nothing.  Micropayments create the middle step - let me pay for this article that I’m dying to read, learn about this topic I KNOW I care about. That’s not a threat to your core business; it’s the on-ramp that grows it.

This theme of undervaluing quality journalism is not new. We built the internet on a model that gave away a lot of work and hoped Google would make the math work with traffic and ads. It got us conditioned to thinking that high quality content should be ‘free’ (side note: nothing is ever really free, but that’s another discussion).  

But now search is changing, referral traffic is volatile, and AI is happy to summarize any story and turn the ‘what’ of reporting into a commodity.  Yes, in that world, the pure wire services and breaking news reports will go down in value.  But the pieces that are not that, the original on-the-ground reporting, thoughtful analysis, well-reasoned opinion, have an opportunity to stand out more than ever. There’s so much noise out there, if you can help people cut through the noise and find the authenticity and trust that they want, you have an opportunity to build an industry on a more stable footing than ever before.  People are starving for authenticity and judgment they can trust. We have to make it easier to access.

So what happens if you stop treating subscriptions and a-la-carte as enemies and start treating them like stages of a relationship? A new reader discovers a single piece and pays a dollar. The next month, maybe they buy three. Then they notice they’re coming back often enough that a subscription would be easier and cheaper. Some will stay a-la-carte forever, and that’s fine—it’s still revenue you never captured before. Others will feel more comfortable paying for full access or even a deeper membership. Same journalism, more ways to support it.

There’s also a creative and analytical upside. When you can see revenue at the story level across all pay types, you learn what the market actually values. Not what a dashboard guessed is valuable. Not what a pageview counted. There is no cleaner signal than the way someone chooses to spend their money.  It helps editors bet on the right beats, helps reporters see which formats spark action, and helps the whole newsroom align around doing the work people are happy to pay for.

This isn’t about cheapening the craft. It’s exactly the opposite. Pricing by story—when done thoughtfully—protects value because it lets great work travel without needing to be free. A link can move through the world and still invite support. A casual reader can participate even when their wallet is tight. And your most dedicated readers can continue to subscribe because they know they are getting real value out of that bundle.

Where does LedeWire fit? We’re not here to pull you off your current stack or replace subscriptions. We’re here to add the missing step. Readers fund a wallet once and can pay seamlessly across participating outlets. You keep your brand, your relationship, and your data. You keep your IP. You decide which stories sit behind the a-la-carte button and how they’re priced. And you get the signals to identify would-be subscribers and make it natural for them to move up when it’s time.

I get it, I really do.  Changing a revenue model feels like touching the engine while the plane is in the air. So let’s start small. Pick a handful of stories that are perfect for “I’ll try this one.” See what the conversion looks like. Watch which readers come back for more. You might find that the audience you thought was “never going to subscribe” actually values your work more than you let yourself believe.

Believe that your reporting has value. Believe that readers will recognize it when given a clear, fair way to show it. Believe that choice doesn’t dilute loyalty, it invites it. When someone pays for a single piece, they’re not signaling disinterest in the rest—they’re starting a relationship on terms that make sense to them. Your job is to make that first “yes” easy, and the next “yes” inevitable.  The hard part is creating value through your work.  You’ve done that already.  Now the goal is to give as many people as possible a way to compensate you for the value you've given them.