"Free" - The Many Meanings to the Newspaper Business

The latest idea from the various newspapers that have been "forced" to go online with their publications is to put up what is called a "pay wall" where their news is hidden from general view behind a members-only for-pay membership. 

The New York Times used to require that you registered before you could read their online edition - then they dropped that requirement, now they're thinking about putting up a pay wall.

You see, the newspapers are upset that Google and others are "stealing" their new, offering it up from within the search engine, and limiting their revenue by not paying for the privilege of doing the indexing and driving people to the paper's site. Rupert Murdoch, newspaper magnate, has threatened to block Google in particular and search engines in general - but anyone who really understands what the internet is evolving to, including of course Google's Eric Schmidt point out that the internet isn't going away, but the newspapers in their present form are - and nothing Rupert Murdoch or any other publisher can do will stop that. They can only hang on and change their ways to deal with the new delivery method and business model the internet represents.

OK - so Newsday's web presence, www.newsday.com, has had their pay wall up for the past 3 months now. How are they doing?

When the answer to a reporter's question about this was voiced, Terry Jimenez, Newsday's publisher nodded yes when asked, "I heard you say 35 people, is that number correct?"

Yup, apparently that's the number they got after their $4 million spent on re-doing their web site. Seems like a broken business model to me.

On the other hand, Google has sent something around 4 Billion clicks per month to the newspaper industry - for free! If the newspapers can't turn that tide of visitors into money that totals up to a lot more than $165/month each then they really do need to get out of the business.

So... a note to the publishers of the world - tell Google they can index your site freely and they'll freely send you all the visitors - and between the two of you, you should be able to turn free into a real business again.

Oh, by the way - rumor has it that Apple is about to help you by introducing a tablet computer that may be the forerunner of the item Google's David Drummond alludes to in his remarks to the World Association of Newspapers - now go out and make something of it!

In the mean time, David Ingram and I are ready and willing to take a stab at picking up some of their readers/viewers. Come on over tonight and sample it. We're always ready to learn from our audience - so chime in with some chat too.

richard