Time: How to Save Your Newspaper

I like this. I really do. Take it off the web, shutting off the spigot to those plagiarizing, and hopefully making some buttholes pucker when people realize, hey, we need news.

 

I'm interested in a system that uses an ISP tax to support multiple forms of media. I just don't know how feasible it really is.

Here's someone who says it won't work ... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090105/0129403284.shtml

 

I find it interesting all those against taxing, charging, paying for media or think it won't work are those BLOGGERS! who rip off, link to or cite newspapers and the information they access for free.

 

TIME (1-year) [MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION]


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Issues: 56 issues / 12 months

Time is not free but pretty dam close.

 

I think a lot of them have gotten such an inflated sense of self at this point that they have lost sight of the fact that they are glomming off the evil, hated "MSM," who is doing all of their reporting for them.

On another message board I frequent, which skews younger, I can't tell you how often I read something along the lines of, "I prefer various blogs to mainstream media sources. I believe they are more independent-minded and not in the pocket of corporate America or political interests ..." and on and on and on.

No different than on here. If you've ever been to the political board, you've read some of the conservatives post about how "The Media" never reported on Tony Rezko or William Ayers, as if that information just showed up in their heads one afternoon.

Bloggers and aggregators are in for a rude, rude awakening one day when the well runs dry.

 

You think?

 

Just so we're clear on who said what ...

The quote about news companies needing to target ISP providers is from Joe Williams, not from me.

The quote about 2009 is from Walter Isaacson's piece in Time, not from me.

Not that I necessarily disagree with either statement, but I don't want credit for someone else's comments.

 

I just wanted to highlight that part of the excerpt you quoted at the start of this thread. I didn't mean to inadvertantly credit you instead of Isaacson. Sorry for any confusion.

Have we really seen the end of layoffs? It would be nice, but I doubt it. Too many beancounters, not enough idea people sitting in those meetings.

 

The newspaper in my town had 29 retail ads in this morning's paper. One was full page, the largest of the rest was like a 2x7.
Ouch.

 

I've been saying for a long time that this is what we need to do, and, at some point, it is going to happen. Whether it will actually work or not remains to be seen. But I think it simply must be attempted.

 

I started the "End of the Internet" thread for that very reason; the higher-ups at my chain are seriously considering axing the "free" stuff on the internet.

 

If we're going to get all newspaper publishers together and get them to pull their websites for a few days, why don't we see if we can't get them to also put in place a subscription charge for those websites?

You realize that's all that we're missing, right?

If there were a subscription charge for each newspaper's website, the company could track the thousands of people who come to the site each day. That would then allow the papers to set solid circulation figures that advertisers could believe in. And that would allow newspapers to get decent ad rates from their websites.

Advertisers not trusting the "hits" numbers for newspapers is the No. 1 problem in ad sales right now. And because of that, most papers can't set rates or have to set them so low that it barely covers the cost of creating and placing the ads.

All it would take -- and why this can't be done, I don't know -- is for all publishers to come to some sort of an agreement on charging for the online product. The readers are there and they're not gonna go away. You can't get the stuff we provide anywhere else. And to paraphrase my boy Blago, it's a fuckin' valuable thing, we shouldn't be givin' it away for free.