An update on the newspaper industry.

Seeing that Sen. Kerry chose to hold a hearing on newspapers last year, I will continue to report on how things are going. All the talk is about what Rupert Murdoch is doing: He is going to start charging for two newspapers in London, and a whopping $18 (!!) a month for the WSJ on the iPad. Andrew Sullivan has a good roundup of the reaction to this news:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/03/150-a-day-please.html#more

The last quote in his piece is what makes the most sense to me: it's going to force people to buy the print copy. After all, they get on line for free with the deal, and if this is a paper Londoners enjoy reading, this may stop the "leaking" of profits for the newspapers. Of course, it also means that international readers will stop reading it. I know that is true for me. Unless there is some kind of freemium option where you can read, say, 10 articles a month for free, I will not be reading those papers. After all, the BBC site is free and will remain free, which is also true of The Guardian.

But there is one problem that no one addresses: say, Murdoch's plan "works" to a certain extent. He loses the international readers who are useless to him anyway (the ads aren't directed toward them), and there is the idea that people in Britain want to read the paper. What about "piracy"? If somehow, the Sunday Times and the London Times are SO GREAT but people don't want to pay for it, will there not be websites sprouting up to offer articles up for free or blogs that generously excerpt? Murdoch has claimed he will sue, but perhaps he needs to have a meeting with the RIAA (the recording industry) and ask how their lawsuits "solved" the illegal downloading problem. I still remember that during the year that the NYT charged for their op-eds, I found a blog that blatantly committed copyright infringement by reprinting entire editorials by writers like Maureen Dowd and Thomas Friedman. It was never taken down as far as I know. Who knows how many more of them were on line undercutting the NYT's grand idea.

In short, I think that Jeff Jarvis is right that this is all folly. However, unlike him, I am not optimistic about the future of journalism. The music industry has been cut into half (they literally have HALF the revenue they did in 1999), and the bleeding continues. Artists and labels are struggling to find new business models but nothing has completely worked yet. That is how it is going to go for journalism. Interestingly enough, government is the one place that continues to do reasonably well: NPR has transformed their site so you can read articles in addition to listening to radio stories and the BBC, despite some problems, will, like NPR, remain free (as will PBS). But I think the newspaper industry is fooling itself if it thinks a paywall will solve its problems long term, and the iPad will not help them at all.

So JK supporters: are you still paying for a newspaper or magazine subscription? I subscribe to two news magazines, but do not pay for a newspaper. The truth is I don't like newspapers in print: you get all that black ink on you and the shape of the paper is inconvenient to hold. I have subscribed to newspapers occasionally over the years, but it feels like a chore after a while. I am quite content without one. As to on line, I do not see myself ever paying for a newspaper. I'll check the local network affiliates' websites if the AJC went behind a paywall. I'm not saying those local channel websites are as good, but they're good enough.

I have it delivered for manly two reasons, one is to counter the Tribune Review which is that RW POS newpaper that serves as Scaif's soapbox. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the paper I have delivered, is more moderate and even though it does lean more left, it does try to be fair and provide some balance. And, the other reason is I do not want to see it go out of business and for my area only to have one paper, and one point of view available-which is the Scaif point of view.