Newspaper Execs Hold Secret Meeting To Discuss Charging Web Users

[babylonsister]

May 28 2009, 8:31AM

Shhhh. Newspaper Publishers Are Quietly Holding a Very, Very Important Conclave Today. Will You Soon Be Paying for Online Content?
James Warren


Here's a story the newspaper industry's upper echelon apparently kept from its anxious newsrooms: A discreet Thursday meeting in Chicago about their future.

"Models to Monetize Content" is the subject of a gathering at a hotel which is actually located in drab and sterile suburban Rosemont, Illinois; slabs of concrete, exhibition halls and mostly chain restaurants, whose prime reason for being is O'Hare International Airport. It's perfect for quickie, in-and-out conclaves.

There's no mention on its website but the Newspaper Association of America, the industry trade group, has assembled top executives of the New York Times, Gannett, E. W. Scripps, Advance Publications, McClatchy, Hearst Newspapers, MediaNews Group, the Associated Press, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises and Freedom Communication Inc., among more than two dozen in all. A longtime industry chum, consultant Barbara Cohen, "will facilitate the meeting."

One hopes it displays the same sense of purpose as, say, troubled world leaders did at Yalta in 1945 or, in a rather less respectable sector of the economy, beleaguered mob bosses did at a legendary Apalachin, New York, confab in 1957.

Cross one's fingers on their behalf, even if there's worry that some don't really possess the nerve and vision to exit a mess for which they hold significant responsibility.

more...

http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/james_warren/2009/05/shhhh_newspaper_publishers_are_quietly_holding_a_very_very_important_conclave_today_will_you_soon_be.php

[islandmkl]

1. go ahead...make it so we don't read their stuff 'first-hand', anymore...

jesus...call Steve Jobs and ask him how this whole buy-one-song-at-a-time thing has worked...

or, even better, ask the recording industry how the last 10 or 15 years have worked out...

[aquart]

2. If newspapers are moving entirely online, there has to be a revenue stream.

There has to.

[islandmkl]

4. welcome to the internet...

the business models are still being designed...and i would submit that the newspaper industry has no clue what model to adopt, as they apparently can not devise a successful one for themselves..

[MannyGoldstein]

8. Apple's Doing Just Fine

Charging works when the price is low enough so that it justifies the convenience. Would I pay 50 cents per day for the NY Times rather than dealing with some other way of getting it illegally? Sure I would.

[islandmkl]

9. my point exactly...jobs had to lead the music industry kicking and screaming...

into the modern market...

[rucky]

3. Newspapers: Finding new and innovative ways to be irrelevant

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. Except for McClatchy, would anyone want to pay to read MSM?

We seem to getting accurate news from progressive sites online.

[babylonsister]

6. But those sites get a lot of their 'facts' from the papers.

I don't know what the answer will be.

[ContinentalOp]

10. So let THEM buy a subscription.

:shrug:

[ContinentalOp]

11. In fact, that may be a good business model...

Make the newspapers a fairly expensive, elite resource, like Lexis Nexis that researchers, libraries, academics, and other journalists subscribe to. Then online journalists,. bloggers, political commentators, etc. (paid through advertising revenue) could reference, rewrite, and comment on that reporting and provide their content to the public for free.

[L0oniX]

7. Good luck on that.