One opinion on making the Internet work for newspapers ...

I actually tend to think giving columnists and writers more media exposure off the printed page brings more people to read them whether it be on the newspaper website or in print. Do I think that newspapers need to protect their content? Yes. Do I think going completely dark is an intelligent way of doing it? No. Going completely dark will not save the newspaper industry, rather it will make newspapers an irrelevant voice in the media world.

 

We agree to disagree.

 

Agreed. I think this debate will go on for awhile.

 

I would have disagreed with statrat a few weeks ago. Now, I think he's right.

It's not going away, and we'd better figure out ways to make it work for us rather than think we can sabotage it.

 

Thank you for checking in from the stone age.
Pull all your columnists off radio and TV. Then see how long it takes for those columnists to become obscure.

 

Twoback,

Nobody's saying a columnist can't become a fixture in the community. I merely saying they don't speak their editorial content - they write it. Again - it's about not diluting the voice and tying the name solely to the paper.

Again, those newspaper names - Globe, Morning, Free Press, Post, Times - actually still mean something. TV and radio trades on the expertise those names lend. If you force TV and radio to find their credibility elsewhere, and retake that voice and say "you're not gonna find this on TV," then you have an angle. What's the angle now? As seen on TV! What compels people to read what they can see? Except, of course, for those weird Star Wars and Star Trek fans.

Again, as a limited economic model, protectionism works. It's called a patent. Patent and protect the talent for the duration of their contract.

 

Protectionism would only work if everybody were in on it. And again, it's unrealistic to think that everyone is going to swallow the party line. So there's no point in trying it.

 

It's also not realistic to think that's going to last very long, even if it did work in the near-term.

Online development is continuing to happen, every day. By the time newspapers figured out a (workable) plan for hoarding their talent, online news organizations would have developed a plan for creating original content -- in some cases, they already have.

The idea here is NOT protecting the sanctity of the print product, and it's NOT "making" the Web work for us ... it's using (and furthering) the Web in ways the market uses it, and making *that* work for us.