In a recent article, Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of TIME, states that free online news “[feels] like the future of journalism only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings”. His solution: micro-payments. In Isaacson’s opinion, the key to attracting online revenue is to come up with an iTunes-easy method of micro-payment to permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog or video, for a penny, nickel, dime or whatever the creator chooses to charge. But is this really the way to go? Steve Outing, thought leader in the online media industry, for his part, argues that micro-payments will even hasten newspapers’ death spiral...

• two possible revenue streams, namely pay-per-view and subscriptions;
• how consumers nowadays can pay on European newspaper sites;
• what the (dis)advantages of the different payment options are.

Our own findings were complemented by a case study of ClickandBuy, a (micro-)payment service provider which has hands-on experience in the offering of payment solutions to the websites of FT Deutschland and Bild. Renowned e-commerce expert and influential blogger Dave Birch, of Hyperion Consult, acted as a 'referee’. He commented on each of the presentations and moderated the discussion.