The Best in Digital Content: What our Reporters would Buy with $100

There’s a schism between the people who believe you can build a business charging for content — and those who believe you can’t. In the last couple of years, the scales have been tipping toward the pay model. While the vast majority of digital content is still gratis, a fifth of U.S. newspapers were charging online by this summer, and a fifth of tablet users pay for news. But what makes content worth paying for? Which content services create a really compelling experience for users and how have they done it? With that question in mind, we gave our media reporters—Robert Andrews, Laura Hazard Owen, Jeff John Roberts and Janko Roettgers—a hypothetical allowance of $100 and asked them to tell us how they’d spend it on digital content.

Here’s what they said.

• Robert Andrews: 3 months of Spotify ($30); Soma FM ($2.99 month); Ancestry.co.uk subscription ($62.71).
• Laura Hazard Owen: New York Times Saturday-Sunday subscription (3 months -- $39.60); Byliner Plus subscription (3 months -- $7.99); Eat Your Books subscription (3 months -- $7.50); Worldreader donation ($14.93).
• Jeff John Roberts: MLB.tv ($120); The Magazine (3 months -- $5.97); Downton Abbey ($14.99/season)…
• Janko Roettgers: Netflix subscription (2 months -- $16); Hulu Plus subscription (2 months -- $16); Spotify (2 months -- $20); Vudu (4 rentals -- $20); Kindle e-book ($12); $10 worth of apps; Miami Connection ($6).