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3 Comments For This Post

1. rhondaperry Says:
   March 9th, 2009 at 6:56 pm

   I have nothing against newspapers, but maybe it’s time for a new business model?

2. arkansasblogger Says:
   March 9th, 2009 at 10:26 pm

   The two dominant Internet business models are failures for the news industry so far.

   The popular advertising-supported model allows readers to consume the product for free, but it doesn’t generate the revenue that newspapers need to produce a high-quality pure-play Internet product with first-rate reporting.

   The subscription model isn’t working either, except for premium publications like the Wall Street Journal. It especially won’t work for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette because our state is languishing near the bottom for Internet availability, and they’ve done nothing to promote building the necessary infrastructure in our state. So far, the Dem-Gaz doesn’t get it. Ditto for Stephens Media. The long-term future for those organizations is not bright.

   It’s not a surprise that both of those models are failures. Their failure was predicted long before the Internet because a popular medium for news.

   There is a third way that would work better: micropayments. Internet users would pay very small amounts, say a fraction of a cent, to read a news article. At the end of the billing period, they would be billed for the content they consumed. A typical user might pay ten bucks a month. News junkies would pay more, and infrequent readers would pay less. The revenue from this model would sustain the news industry, and allow for better-quality news than the two failed models.

   In order for micropayments to work, a substantial majority of news sites would have to join a clearinghouse to handle the billing and allocate the revenues. Perhaps after some prolonged suffering, the news industry will eventually see the light. But not until several more good newspapers have gone out of business.

3. norgi Says:
   March 11th, 2009 at 10:18 pm

   Two things:
   1) Newspapers aren’t dying, old people are dying.

   2) The thing no one mentions is that newspapers are dying because they succk! Last Sunday’s Dem-Gaze Perspective section was the worst.

   To the death, Dem-Gaze promotes their bankrupt ideologies. Insensitive to their own cognitive dissonance. Greenberg defends a canon. Oakley skates. Gitz shitz and Masterson cries. All together the editors remain stalwarts of the status quo. Webb waves a worn out flag over the whole thing.

   (The details are at norgi.com but) Webb tells a sad story about a sinking ship. On a personal level it IS sad. But from an Arkansas perspective, it’s up and comings. This paper has defended ignorance and prejudices as tradition. “Tradition” that has shackled working people and sheltered companies. “Tradition” that kept us scared of government by the people and clueless about the real threat–Bob Johnson’s Titans of Industry. “Tradition” that clings to inhumane disparity–in the name of gods no less–and then, when Webb describes people barely surviving the economic catastrophe they’ve been cheering on, he PILES ON THE IDEOLOGY by saying it’s their “American Spirit” coming through it all. STFU!

   Then you have Stephens Media threatening a US Senator through his pooch D. Sanders. (See David Sanders, what, yesterday?)

   Why would anyone pay for propaganda in print or online?

   If you want a blow by blow account of how the editors of the Dem-Gaze suckked last Sunday go to norgi.com.

   Arkansasblogger is probably right about it going to micropayments but that’s no good either. A blogger’s going to pay his 10th of a cent then paste it (or at least the gist of it) on his free blog.

   Owning information is just a bad idea that needs to go away all together anyway.

1 Trackbacks For This Post

1. Blake’s Think Tank » Blog Archive » Note to Brummett: Get a Grip Says:
   March 9th, 2009 at 2:07 pm

   [...] Brummett’s got another gem of a blog post up today. He’s sitting up on the journalistic mountain top, again, throwing rocks down on the Arkansas [...]

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