I do believe that readers more than ever read news content produced by professional journalists. They want professionally produced content.

But, as one media observer wrote, it’s less about the publication these days and more about the individual content .

The “50 of 300” that produce content in the newsroom only includes writers, but not copy editors, proofreaders, fact checkers, among others. So, if you want drivel, or perhaps libel, fine, get rid of all the other 250. Blogs don’t get sued not so much because blogging is considered opinion but because most of them aren’t financially worth suing.

Google sells making money, not “performance,” just like any other big biz.

Per the “Dell sucks” line from Jeff Jarvis’ “What Would Google Do” ass-kissing of Page and Brin, “Jeff Jarvis sucks.”

“Think like capitalists”? God, if this isn’t stupid. Since, until a decade ago, newspapers had the highest profit margin of about any business in the country, they’ve long been thinking like capitalists. Sure, they need to think like capitalists in new ways, but that’s entirely different.

As for thinking like capitalists, if Jarvis weren’t:
A. A university prof;
B. Probably paid for his jet-setting to Davos, etc.;
C. Possibly paid for “What Would Google Do”; he wouldn’t be writing this blog.

What effing bullshit.

Newspapers can’t be about control? That’s why you’ve had alt-weeklies, minority/ethnic weeklies, etc. for decades. The seven-day daily, outside official chattering classes (of whom Jarvis is simply part of the online equivalent) have long not been about control.

Free means no legal restriction relative to people’s freedom to use, redistribute and/or produce modified versions.

WWGD is NOT free online.

Search traffic is only valuable if you can monetize it. Unless the people who come to you from search click on your ads, contribute to increased CPM or buy something on your site, they’re pointless, irrelevant, and actually just a drain on your resources.

So search discovery, as you put it, is a canard. It’s not valuable to a publisher in and of itself. It may allow you to attract higher CPMs, or more click-through, but it’s not a “good” on its own. Sometimes, Jeff, you talk like it is – and in that, you’re wrong.

The same is true of “audience” in general. If I have a million people come to my site and not one of them actually clicks on an ad, or they are the kind of traffic that draws very low CPMs, they’re pointless. They’ll cost me more than they make me, or, if they’re profitable as a group at all, deliver much less revenue than I need to create good quality, differentiated content.

So actually, there are two questions here. First, will people pay for content online? The answer to that is clearly “yes”, because some successful businesses have used that model. But I think that everyone agrees that model won’t work for everyone. A lot of people are going to have to rely on ad revenue.

So, the second question is “how do you get the kind of traffic to your site which maximises potential for ad revenue?” And the answer to that may not be “attract the biggest audience”, but “attract the highest-spending audience” (which will raise your CPMs) or “attact the audience most-likely to click on PPC ads”.

There is no one true way forward.

What you seem to miss, though, is that “free” readers aren’t free to the web site. Traffic which doesn’t generate revenue is an expense, not an asset.

Unless you monetize your readers, you might as well not have them.

I find that a strangely depressing phrase. It sorts of emphasisis the passive. A lot of people love reading, not waiting for something to read.

There is still a huge, huge demand for papers and they’ll continue to sell.

Whether that will work as a business model, I don’t know.

Originality is neither encouraged nor tolerated at MediaNews; the cookie-cutter mentality reigns supreme. It’s too busy trying to make everything look the same in its regional groups by sharing to save costs – ad sales, layout, reporters, photographers, Web sites – that it doesn’t have the flexibility to respond to technological and social changes.

Last year (last year!!!) the local newspapers got the option to run updated news on their sites during the day (among the first articles posted – a funeral notice. How ironic, and ridiculous). Maybe its other groups are further ahead than that, maybe they even have better content that people might actually pay more for. I seriously doubt it.

And as for forcing people to pay for news – go ahead and try it. But don’t be surprised when they migrate to television, radio and news sites like mine that are free. We’re betting on local, targeted advertising and classifieds, and building relationships with other media. And we’re doing it with a handful of people.