E-Media Tidbits

These essays addressed how newspapers might survive their current crisis. Besides industry experts such as Geneva Overholser (director of the Annenberg School of Journalism at the University of Southern California), the writers included Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and other media luminaries.

Two of the Times essays focused on paying for news. The one by Steven Brill (founder of The American Lawyer magazine, Court TV, and Brill's Content) was headlined "Culture of Free" Is Suicide. With newspaper fortunes sliding as they are, the question of whether and how to ask readers to pay for online news has recently gained prominence, including in Walter Isaacson's Feb. 5 Time.com piece, "How to Save Your Newspaper." But Tidbits founding editor Steve Outing advocated a different approach in his Editor & Publisher column yesterday: soliciting donations for online news via a new startup, Kachingle.

The Times essay package drew 183 comments in less than 24 hours. Readers had some intriguing things to say in the comments. Of course, those commenters didn't represent all readers, but they did offer a fresh perspective from the outside the news business. I read only about two pages of the comments, giving most attention to the first page. Some themes emerged, including paying for online news. Payment is probably the theme from this package which is most concrete to readers; an idea they can easily connect with or reject.

Reader Phoebe Whistlethorpe noted her disdain for the idea of paying for online news: "Thank you for delivering this vital information free of charge, a notion anathema to the bourgeois imperatives decreed by Brill and company," she wrote.

Nevertheless, among the first 25 comments to the package, four readers seconded the idea of charging for online news. A couple of them suggested selling online subscriptions for bundles of newspapers -- such as two or three major newspapers, or those plus the local paper. Another option given was to get automatic daily linked PDFs, sold through iTunes.

Prices suggested were:

• $19 yearly
• $1.69 for Sundays
• $5-10 a month
• 99 cents daily

I was encouraged that some readers said they'd volunteer to pay for something they now get free -- and more so that I saw little opposition to the idea. But this is no panacea.

Commenter Rob Z suggested marketing to explain that newsgathering costs money.

Considering revenue from the ad side, reader Tom (who says he has worked on the business side of television stations and newspapers) commented that the real problem is an outdated price structure for ads: "Television faced this same exact dilemma in the early eighties when cable began to seriously erode our viewing audiences," he wrote. "We responded by blowing up our old sales practices, our fixed rate cards, and going to a purely incentive-based system of sales. For every dollar advertisers spent over and above what he had spent in the same period previously, they received an incentive -- a lower unit rate, generally."

Considering the best form to get their news, some readers seemed to want e-paper, or something like it. Rob Z noted: "We also need an inexpensive way to transport this information so we can read on the train, plane or subway. So far, this technology is lacking in a convenient, functional and affordable package."

Commentor PW also supported this technology idea: "It boils down to finding a way to provide the print on demand, I guess. ...[Amazon's] Kindle or something like it may help."

Thoughts on the editorial side of the news business were generally more varied. Readers offered suggestions and moral support. But also, news organizations were faulted for lack of clear and critical coverage -- especially on the financial crisis and the lead-up to the Iraq war. Regarding prewar news stories, Valent commented that any blogger would have done better, and "failures of that magnitude deserve to perish."

Maybe a more coordinated journalistic "herd" might help. Reader A. Robert Smith advocated more collaboration among news organizations: "Competition that is most valuable for a democratic society is not between the Times and The Washington Post or Wall Street Journal or NBC News, but between these news gatherers collectively and the establishment's spinmeisters -- officeholders, corporate executives, press agents, et al. ... Collaboration is not new to newsgathering"

...On this theme, the latest issue of American Journalism Review includes Share and Share Alike -- an article where Sherry Ricchiardi explores new sharing among regional news organizations.

Old and new are becoming reversed. The telegraph boosted The Associated Press and its members. Now digital media and "nichification" have punctured that model.