The problem with that sentence is that newspapers gave up that work decades ago.

> But they will be no match for corrupt politicians, crooked businessmen and phoney celebs with their PR batallions (of sold -out journalists!).

That’s assuming that they’re willing to try. In the past they didn’t. Why is it the internet’s fault that it is unlikely to change that?

Feel free to argue that things would have been different if newspapers had not put up “free content”.

News is a commodity. Absent friction, commodities go for the cost of production+distribution and the internet virtually eliminates both friction and distribution costs.

Newspaper revenues and costs are no where near the cost to produce the news, so they’re unsustainable.

However; all this talk about revising the business model with charging for content is focusing on the wrong thing, because the real focus should be on the kinds and quality of the content being presented. What can truly make newspapers a wanted and needed product again is high quality content that interests people.

I’ve boiled all this down to five ways newspaper Web sites must change:
http://scoopingthenews.blogspot.com/2009/03/five-suggestions-for-how-newspapers.html

I for one enjoy paying for a product I can get elsewhere for free.

Reporters and journalism will be fine. Newspapers? Not so much. “Associate deputy managing editors for furniture, lunch and going to meetings”? REALLY not so much.

Again, Steve: We suffer from an audience problem. We’ve deluded ourselves for the past 35 years that we could preach down to the audience – isn’t that what we all learned from Watergate? Public affairs reporting as a priesthood?

I’d argue no: Watergate was a great cops story, just as Blago is today. But given infinite choice, the audience is going to select what it wants, and it will consume public affairs information the way it wants to consume it – in discussion boards, or on community blogs, or muckracking sites, wherever. And that infinite choice would exist with or without what Alan Mutter calls “the original sin” of posting newspaper content online for free.

The new model? Surprise: There isn’t one yet, at least not with the degree of moral and financial certitude that the last 40 years have wrought. And the several models that will emerge will likely be far more transitory and less lucrative than the past. Which will only matter a little to the best reporters.

(*Upon further review, I’d happily skip the netbook and settle for the 26 part.)

Why, yes, Steve. This is all Jarvis’ fault.

The brilliant Gary Larsen has a classic far side about this situation: “The world was going to hell. People needed a scapegoat. They found Wayne.”

Wayne’s looking out the window, of course, at a mob with flaming torches, pitchforks (!) and signs with phrases like “Destroy Wayne!”

The demise of newspapers isn’t a story about “print.” It isn’t about “failure of the business model.” It isn’t about “traditionalists” versus “triumphalists” (I’ve been accused of being a member of that species; funny thing is, I’ve never met a single example of it).

The failure of print is a story about our industry’s inability to understand that all economic good flowed from the audience. The audience adjusted to a world of near-infinite choice – and we refused to acknowledge it.

Fix the audience problem, folks. Don’t try to patch the old model by walling off the audience from your work, or trying to get them to pay for something that they don’t value that much (because it can be easily replaced – that’s another discussion, tho). Find out how to engage them with meaningful work* and the rest will take care of itself. Not easily, but it will.

(*Potts, as usual, has fine suggestions: http://recoveringjournalist.typepad.com/ )

Danny L. McDaniel
Lafayette, Indiana

Thought I was reading a bio of Howie Kurtz there for a moment

this isnt reinvention. do you(or they) think they will make anywhere near the profit of ten years ago on an “e-reader?”

why on earth does the times think it will be quicker on its feet than any number of tight, driven ensembles?

the theory that, years later, people will now pay for the times, is wrong. no one know what to sell or to whom.

when they shrink their newsroom costs to nothing by creating hyper-local blogs they unleah the beast of free labor. when there is no hope of $$ from the times ythe brand will die. as long as the times brand is strong they will be a player. but no old guard entity will be quick enough to keep pace.

what is necessary is a brutal overhead analysis of running various levels of newsroom staff. find one that can survive. chop NOW to that point. then you have a chance. unfortunately it wont be with old guard journalists. some institutional knowledge will be lost.