
Newspaper economics: online and offline - davidw
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/newspaper-economics-online-and-offline.html
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parka
Here's an excellent article on the death of the Rocky Mountain News: <a
href="[http://www.johntemple.net/2009/09/lessons-from-rocky-
mountai...](http://www.johntemple.net/2009/09/lessons-from-rocky-mountain-
news-text.html>http://www.johntemple.net/2009/09/lessons-from-rocky-mountain-
news-text.html</a>);

The lessons mentioned in the article are easily applicable to any newspapers
out there.

Newspapers need to find a new business model fast, to survive n the new
competitive environment.

Experimentation is the way to go, as mentioned. It's all about trying, trying
fast enough in hope to hit the jackpot.

While tablets might seem like the popular thing right now, they are just about
distribution - getting content to people. That doesn't change the way how
people will want to part their money.

Let me end with two quotes from Albert Einstein which I think are applicable
here:

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different
results."

"The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of
thinking with which we created them."

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brc
Part of the problem or part of the solution?

Newspaper owners and managers are kidding themselves if they think they can
force the world back 10 years. Either get on board with new business models or
face the consequences. You can't put the internet back in a box.

Perhaps the future of news is BBC type journalism, where everyone pays a news
tax (called licence fee in the UK) and the government pays journalists to
follow the stories. With the right indepedence from the politicians, these
journalists can generate the news, and sites can take these feeds for low
cost. I'm normally against government ownership of anything, but if newspapers
can't be profitable enough to generate news that doesn't pay, then someone is
going to have to do it.

~~~
davidw
They do that in Italy too, and it's pretty much a complete waste of my money.

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davidw
This is by Hal Varian - he's one of those people where I'm happy to read
pretty much anything he writes.

