A Bold, Old Idea for Saving Journalism

The crisis in journalism has, during the past few months, reached meltdown proportions. It is now possible to contemplate a time in the near future when major towns will no longer have a newspaper and when magazines and network news operations will employ no more than a handful of reporters.

There is, however, a striking and somewhat odd fact about this crisis. Newspapers now have more readers than ever. Their content, as well as that of news magazines and other producers of traditional journalism, is more popular than ever -- even among (in fact, especially among) young people.

The problem is that fewer of these consumers are paying. Instead, news organizations are merrily giving away their news for free. According to a Pew Research Center study, a tipping point occurred last month: more people in America got their news online for free than paid for it by buying newspapers and magazines. Who can blame them? Even an old print junky like myself has quit subscribing to the New York Times, because I read it online for free.

This is not a business model that makes a lot of sense. Perhaps it appeared to make sense when web advertising was booming and when every half-sentient publisher could pretend to be among the clan who "got it" by chanting the mantra that the ad-supported web was "the future." But when web advertising declined in the fourth quarter of this past year, it began to feel that this was the future only in the sense that a steep cliff is the future for a herd of lemmings.

Newspapers and magazines traditionally have had three revenue sources: newsstand sales, subscriptions, and advertising. The new business model relies only on the last of these. That makes for a wobbly stool even when the one leg is strong. When it weakens, the stool is likely to fall.

In the last few weeks, we've seen a variety of local papers shut down completely, the Tribune Company file for bankruptcy, Lee Enterprises face delisting from the New York Stock Exchange, and Gannet and other companies announce another round of year-end layoffs of 10% or more.

Henry Luce, the founder of Time, disdained the notion of giveaway publications that relied solely on ad revenue. He called that formula "morally abhorrent" and also "economically self-defeating." That was because he believed that good journalism required that a publication's primary duty be to its readers, not to its advertisers.

In an advertising-only revenue model, the incentive is perverse. It is also self-defeating, because eventually you will weaken your bond with your readers if you do not feel directly dependent upon them for your revenue. Newspapers will end up producing a lot of sections about gardening and home improvement, which advertisers want, and getting rid of their book review sections, as the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post have done.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, Dr. Johnson said, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. Those fortnights are upon us, and I suspect that 2009 will be remembered as the year that newspapers, followed by magazines and other content creators, realized that further rounds of cost-cutting will not stave off the hangman.

One option for survival, which is being tried by some publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Detroit Free Press, is to eliminate or cut drastically their print editions and to focus instead on their free websites. For many publications and consumers that makes sense. It will, and should be, one of the waves of the future.

That approach, however, still makes a publication totally dependent on ad dollars. So I am hoping that this year will see the dawn of another option that some news organizations might pursue. It's a bold, old idea: getting paid by users for the services they provide and the journalism they produce. If this happens, the advertising implosion of 2008 will have the benefit of birthing a business strategy that permits publications to become more beholden to their readers.

This notion of charging for content is an old idea not simply because newspapers and magazines have been doing it for nearly four centuries. It's also something they used to do at the dawn of the online era in the early 1990s. Back then there were a passel of online service companies, such as Prodigy, CompuServe, Delphi, and AOL. They used to charge users for the minutes that they were online. It was in their interest to keep them online for as long as possible. As a result, good content was valued. When I was in charge of online media at Time back then, every year or so we would play off AOL and CompuServe. The bidding one year reached a million dollars for our magazine and bulletin boards.

Then along came various tools that made it easier for publications and users to venture onto the open internet rather than remain in the walled gardens created by the online services. There were various protocols for posting and finding content on the internet. They had funny names, such as Gopher and Archie, and prosaic ones, such as File Transfer Protocol and the World Wide Web. I remember talking to Louis Rossetto, then the editor of Wired, in a lobby of New York's Waldorf Astoria during the 1994 National Magazine Awards lunch. We discussed ways to put our respective magazines directly on the internet, rather than on AOL or CompuServe, and we decided that the best way was to use the hypertext markup language and transfer protocols that defined the World Wide Web. Wired and Time both made the plunge onto the web the same week in 1994, and within a year most publications had as well.

We were inventing things such as banner ads, so we didn't try very hard to impose subscription fees. And thus we abandoned getting paid for our content.

One of history's ironies is that the concept of hypertext -- those links that are embedded on a web page -- had been invented by Ted Nelson in the early 1960s with the goal of enabling micropayments for content. He wanted to make sure that the people who created good stuff got rewarded for it. In his vision, all links on a page would facilitate the accrual of small, automatic payments for whatever content was being accessed.

Instead, the web got caught up in the ethos that information wants to be free. Other folks who were smarter than we were avoided that trap. For example, when Bill Gates noticed in 1976 that hobbyists were freely sharing the Altair BASIC code that he and his colleagues had written, he sent an open letter to members of the Homebrew Computer Club telling them to stop. "One thing you do is prevent good software from being written," he railed. "Who can afford to do professional work for nothing?"

The easy internet ad dollars of the late 1990s enticed most traditional newspapers and magazines to put all of their content, plus a whole lot of blogs and whistles, onto their websites for free. But much of the ad dollars ended up flowing to groups who did not actually create content, especially not journalistic reporting, but instead piggybacked on it: the search engines, portals, and aggregators who compiled pages of links and pointers.

Another group also benefited from this system where content, reporting, and information was all posted for free: the internet service providers, including the big telephone and cable companies. They get to charge customers $20 to $30 a month for access to this trove of free content and services.

It was not in their interest to facilitate easy ways for newspapers and other media creators to charge for their content. Thus we have a world in which phone companies make it easy and expected for kids to pay up to 20¢ when they send a text message, but it seems technologically and psychologically difficult to get people to pay 10¢ for a magazine, newspaper, or newscast.

Currently, a few newspapers -- most notably the Wall Street Journal -- charge for their online editions by requiring a monthly subscription. When Rupert Murdoch acquired the Journal, he ruminated publicly about dropping the subscription fee. But Murdoch is, above all, a smart businessman. He took a look at the economics and decided it was lunacy to forego the revenue -- and that was even before the online ad market began falling. Now his move looks really smart. Paid subscriptions for the Journal's website were up 7% in a very gloomy year.

But I don't think that subscriptions should be the only way to charge for content. A person who wants a copy of one day's edition of a newspaper or is enticed by a link to an interesting article is rarely going to go through the cost and hassle of signing up for a subscription under the current payment systems. The key for attracting online revenue, I think, is coming up with an iTunes-easy, quick micropayment method. We need something like digital coins or an E-Z Pass digital wallet -- a one-click system that will permit impulse purchases of a newspaper, magazine, article, blog, application, or video for a penny, nickel, dime, or whatever the creator chooses to charge.

Admittedly, the internet has been littered for the past 15 years by micropayment companies that have failed. Remember Flooz, Beenz, CyberCash, BitPass, Peppercoin, and DigiCash? Barely. Many tracts and blog entries have been written about why the concept can't work because of mental transaction costs and the like.

But things have changed. "With newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also to the news itself," wrote the savvy New York Times columnist David Carr earlier this year in a column endorsing the idea of paying for content. This creates a necessity that ought to be the mother of invention.

In addition, the two most creative digital innovators have shown that a pay-per-drink model can work when it's made easy enough: Steve Jobs got music consumers (of all people) comfortable with the concept of paying 99¢ for a tune instead of Napsterizing an entire industry, and Jeff Bezos with his Kindle showed that consumers would buy electronic versions of books, magazines and newspapers if it could be done simply.

What internet payment options are there today? Pay Pal is the most famous, but it's cumbersome and has transaction costs too high for impulse buys of less than a dollar. As usual, the denizens of social network sites such as Facebook and MySpace are leading the way by using systems such as Spare Change, which allows them to charge their Pay Pal accounts or credit cards to get digital currency that they can spend in small doses. Similar services include Bee-Tokens and Tipjoy. Twitter users have Twitpay, which is a micropayment service for the micromessaging set. Gamers have also been pioneers in purchasing digital currency that can be used for impulse buys during online role-playing games. PaymentOne and Paymo are trying to enable people to make micropayments that get put on their phone bill. And real-world commuters are used to gizmos such as E-Z Pass, which somehow zaps out electronic change and deducts it automatically from their prepaid account as they glide through a highway toll booth.

If I ran the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or Los Angeles Times, I would take the lead by creating my own digital coin purse or micropayment E-Z Pass and try to get other content creators to use it as well. Or I would work with a company such as Amazon, Pay Pal, Google, Apple, or Microsoft to partner in creating one. I would at the same time also start accepting the best of the existing micropayment systems. Just as stores take multiple credit cards, sites should accept multiple micropayment systems.

The ideal micropayment system would be so easy to use that you'd hardly think about making an impulse purchase. I see no need for itemized accounting. Indeed, the lack of itemized bills floating around would make it particularly appealing to those who purchase things a bit more titillating than the Wall Street Journal. Those who wanted an itemized bill could use a premium service that provided that.

Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge 2¢ for an article, or a dime for that day's full edition and website access, or $2 for a month's worth of editions and web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough. Subscribers to the physical version of the paper could get the online version for free. There certainly should be no collusion among media companies, and competitors should be free to charge any price they wanted, or nothing.

The system could be used by all forms of media: magazines and blogs, games and apps, TV newscasts and amateur videos, porn pictures and policy monographs, the reports of citizen journalists, recipes of great cooks, and songs of garage bands.

This would offer a lifeline not just to traditional media outlets; it would also nourish and encourage all sorts of citizen journalism and blogging. Citizen journalists and bloggers have vastly enriched our realms of information and ideas. But most cannot make much money at it. As a result, they tend to do it for the ego kick or as a civic contribution, and they tend to be from the more privileged elite. A micropayment system would allow regular folks, the type who have to worry about feeding their families and paying their mortgages, to supplement their income by doing citizen journalism that is of value to their community.

Choosing to charge for content is merely one of many options that could play a role in sustaining a diverse media mix in this country. Many newspapers and magazines -- and bloggers and citizen journalists -- would decide to remain free, or rely on a tip jar for voluntary donations, or be subsidized by public-interest organizations or rich owners. That's fine. The more competing business models there are, the healthier the resulting media mix will be.

But a micropayment system would provide another option. Newspapers that felt their daily output was worth a dime -- and whose readers felt that way -- could end up charging a dime, and thus be more likely to survive and even thrive. The people at these papers would also wake up each morning with the worthy incentive to produce a paper that people thought was worth at least a dime.

When I used to go fishing in the bayous of Louisiana as a young boy, my friend Thomas would sometimes steal ice from those machines outside of gas stations. He had the theory that ice should be free. We didn't reflect much on who would make the ice if it were free, but fortunately we grew out of that phase. Likewise, those who believe that all content should be free should reflect on who will open bureaus in Baghdad or be able to fly off as freelancers to report in Rwanda under such a system.

Over the past few weeks, for example, I've had a deep interest in what was happening in Gaza and how it might affect the status of Hamas. I've turned to the smart and nuanced reporting of Ethan Bronner of the New York Times, Griff Witte and Jonathan Finer of the Washington Post, and Ashraf Khalil if the Los Angeles Times. They are all deeply informed about the region. They are brave and industrious about getting to Gaza City and the various villages further south. And it is valuable to me as a reader and, I think, to the world at large that their newspapers are willing -- and able -- to pay their salaries and expenses so that they can feed our desire for independent information.

So I hope that 2009 will be the year when a few good newspapers and other creators of valuable content start charging. I say this not because I am "evil," which is the description my daughter slings at those who want to charge for their content or music or applications on the web. Instead, I say this because my daughter is very creative, and when she gets older and produces some really neat and valuable stuff, I want her to get paid for it rather than coming to me for money or deciding that it makes more sense to be an investment banker.

I say this, too, because I love journalism. I think it is valuable and should be valued by its consumers. I think we need it for the health of our local communities, our national democracy, and our world. The Knight Foundation recently created a commission hosted by the Aspen Institute that detailed "the need to sustain local, public service journalism, whatever the business model." I feel that's true of all journalism.

In this new digital age, the definition of journalism is changing. It is no longer something that is carved in stone and handed down from on high by a priesthood of practitioners and mainstream media companies. It can come in forms that are, thankfully, more personal and opinionated and filled with attitude. It has the ability to be more interactive, wikified, collaborative, user-generated, and to blur the distinction between the anointed journalist and the citizen consumer.

But certain defining attributes of journalism should be unchanging. These core values remain central to the journalism that we as a human community need. Journalism must try to be credible. Its practitioners must be open-minded and honest as they gather and convey information, whether from the Gaza strip or our local city halls. We, the reader and consumer, must be able to trust them -- to know that they are trying to serve us rather than some hidden agenda. They must aim for the truth. "The notion there is such a thing as the truth has gotten kind of a bad rap over the past 30 years," Kurt Andersen said at an Aspen Institute conference this past summer, "but I still think that the pursuit of the truth is what needs to drive journalists."

Why? Because the proper goal of good journalism should be to serve the reader.

Which brings me back to my hope that this year will be the one when micropayments catch on and readers begin paying for the journalism they want. That way, journalists will again be beholden mainly to their readers, rather than catering increasingly to advertisers or other agendas. I suspect that we will find this is actually liberating. The need, even in the online realm, to be valued by readers -- serving them first and foremost rather than relying only on advertising revenue -- will allow the media once again to set their compass true to what journalism should always be about.

Read my Time cover story "How to Save Your Newspaper".

Click here to read the full speech from the Aspen Institute.

Comments

[Henryk A. Kowalczyk - Huffpost Blogger]

Just for the record, I posted a polemic with this text,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/henryk-a-kowalczyk/journalism-does-not-need_b_165082.html

[MarleneJM]

A THOUGHT FOR YOUR PENNIES: MICROPAYMENT AND THE LIBERATION OF CONTENT
Theodor Holm Nelson

I was recently surprised to see my name and my original micropayment concept discussed by Walter Isaacson in the hallowed columns of TIME, even more surprised to hear him say my name also on the Jon Stewart show. In both these venues, Isaacson brought forward ideas-- micropayment and its benefits-- that have been waiting a long time.

His article has earned controversy in many places, including the New York Times. But those who have commented on Isaacson's work have seen only one side of the picture, imagining micropayment, say, as paying $2 for a subscription or 10¢ for an article on line. As today's kids would say, THAT'S SO NOT MICRO!

I'd like to put the Micro back in micropayment, and bring back the rest of the idea.

First, I must clarify one issue. The way Isaacson phrases it, I thought of hypertext in 1960 just in order to make micropayment possible: "Hypertext had been invented by Ted Nelson in the early 1960s with the goal of enabling micropayments for content."

This has it inside-out. I came up with the idea of micropayment to make hypertext possible. But the hypertext I envisioned was very different from what we see now. In 1960 there was no such thing as an "embedded Web link", since there was no Web, and my designs were very different.

See full article at http://transcopyright.org/hcoinRemarks-D28.html

[Adam Rugel]

"Piggybacking" is a gross oversimplification of what search engines, portals, and aggregators do. Yes, search engines treat words as crawable, indexible, representable objects, but what percentage of these words come from the pros? It's a speck.

A better focus of print media's attention is topic-specific websites (travel, entertainment, health, music...) who are wooing readers away with original, albeit often poorly written copy from their user bases paired with user ratings and algorithms. In travel, readers who used to rely on well-written copy from print media for things like hotel and restaurant reviews have in short order turned to aggregated review and rating sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp... read the rest here http://blog.trazzler.com/2009/02/paying-for-writers-new-model.html

[AlanJacobson]

Permalink: http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/bell_tolls_for_time_too.htm

Time's "Modest Proposal" is delivered in a form that is remarkably modest itself – its 56 pages are barely thick enough to shim a coffee table, let alone support an entire industry.

Time may be girded in gravitas, but its physical presence lacks heft. The pot is calling the kettle black while newspapers and magazines head into the red.

A recent commenter on Alan Mutter's superb blog said, "The problem with media companies is that they don't know how to build a successful website from scratch."

"The reason young people don't gravitate to newspaper websites is that most sites are more newspaper than web: staid, static and largely un-interactive. In other words, 1995-style shovelware won't cut it."

While Mutter delivers answers, Jeff Jarvis asks "What Would Google Do?" Based on Jarvis' book, it's safe to assume that Google would not deploy the kind of lackluster sites that Jarvis directed for Newhouse's newspapers until 2005, where he was president and creative director. Ultimately, it's these people who are responsible for the failure of newspapers to monetize online.
But consider this:

Sites like realpeople­realstuff, videojobshop and tweentribune represent the new breed of news and advertising sites. These sites embody the new fundamentals: niche, youth, usability, UGC, geo- and demographically targeted advertising, stickiness, video, automation, mobile, distributive editing and fun.

So go ahead. Pick up the current issue of Time. Its slimness speaks volumes.

[Sutungpo]

And with everything that is going on in America's economy, this is a suggestion to create a two tiered journalism system, with the poor who can't afford to buy unable to access the "quality" publications. Once again, the true American "Entitlement" system rears it's ugly head, ie those who can pay are entitled to a better level of news coverage. Isn't this the crap that got us into this mess in the first place?

The internet has produced a golden age of information access, with the best being available to everyone regardless of their ability to pay. I can go online and read the Times, large excerpts of Harpers, Huffington, the Guardian and BBC, the CSM, even my local rag the Atlanta Journal Constitution, without having to go without food in order to pay for subscriptions.

News flash here folks: Americans aren't willing to pay for books. movies or music when it's available free online. Access to television news is included in the price of television. CHARGING FOR ONLINE NEWS DOESN"T WORK! The Times tried that for years, and all it did was cut down on the number of readers without appreciably increasing revenue. Americans are finally waking up and resenting the true entitlement system, that of the wealthy being entitled to everything from health care to private planes, and the rest of us being entitled to starve. This is a dangerous game for journalism to be playing in these times.

[melbaker]

Bravo for Issacson!
Finally someone mentions the Pink Elephant in the room.
You can't get something for nothing. People who would never think of ripping off a magazine from the news stand are "shocked, shocked I tell you!" at the idea that they should be required to pay something for the sweat of someone fingers on the keyboard.
Who says you'd be asked to pay 50-cents an acticle. In point of fact there is nothing to say you couldn't pay as little as a tenth of a penny.
Clearly the payments should be directed to the actual post. The payment would then go to the author or the news organization they worked for.
What is so hard to understand about that.
Newspapers, bloggers, TV clips and everything else under the sun would have some financial support.
It is frankly time that internet readers grow up and understand that content doesn't appear out of thin air.

[MediaSlackers]

I have three problems with this theory:

The first issue I have is that Isaacson suggests that newspapers use software that allow us, the reader, to pay 10 cents per article or one dollar per day and that this will somehow change the direction of dwindling dailies and sunken stock prices. Isaacson compares the iTunes model to his micro-payment for news idea. The idea that if I pay .99 cents for a song, I will also pay .99 cents for today’s New York Times is wrong. They are different mediums and used in different ways.

Second: There still has yet to be a mea culpa for all of the wrongs wrought over the last decade. I have yet to hear little more than a half-hearted apology for “getting things wrong” with the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq for any of the mainstream newspapers. It is so much more than just “getting things wrong” and they know it.

Third: Most newspaper articles provide information, news and background once and they have then served their purpose. Even if the charge is one cent per article, I can’t see the mainstream market going backwards. What Isaacson is asking us to do is go back in time, forget that at one time we were able to get our news for free, and instead ask for money for the service.

[listeningpost]

You're right, it's not bold, just old.
When satisfying the stock holders obliterated the notion of producing a good product to ensure success, American industry literally "sold the farm".
Gutenberg had a good run, better now to leave the trees in the forest.

[alexis d]

I don't know if I'd say it's more popular than ever, so much as it is so vapid and lacking in substance that readers starving for quality journalism have to pick over more of it to extract any nutritional value. I would be happy to pay for real reporting, but that has been in short supply.

[ObjectiveRealist]

I subscribed to Science for a year, and opted for electronic delivery, which they provided via a service called Zinio, which allowed me to download and view the entire magazine, albeit in a proprietary file format only viewable in their "Zinio Reader." Instead of micropayments, I'd like something like that, but improved to allow me to view my own subscribed material remotely.

Say I download an issue of a magazine or newspaper to my desktop computer, in my house. My ideal electronic paid access system would then turn my 'subscription' folder into a read-only server directory, which I could access from my laptop & PDA, only with a strong password. The content producers' material is just as safe from piracy, and I have all the convenience of a hard copy, but I only have to carry around a USB memory device with my passwords on it.

Win + Win

[Givethemhellharry]

Your idea makes an awful lot of sense, both for the media and the public. However what I think should occir is that the portals such as cable and phone companies that provide access to the internet should be the payers, just as they are for TV programs. This would still provide "free" content while at the same time provide the revenue stream to sustain hopefully good journalism. Those portals that didn't want to pay per click would have their users blocked. this would force them to carry those sites that their users wanted.

[ObjectiveRealist]

That sounds more like Pay-Per-View cable than Basic or any of the other cable package subscription plans, so it might work, but I, for one, do not want Comcast, Verizon or Cox to be anything more than a bit pusher. They have already proven to me that they are not to be trusted with any content responsibilities under any circumstances.

[glitzqueen]

News has become a utility for which we pay internet service providers, like paying water companies to keep taps flowing. Beyond costs for access, we also pay for personal equipment and repairs and, as taxpayers, to defray expenses related to building and maintaining infrastructure.

Thus, the news we read online -- and everything else on the Net -- doesn't come free. We're paying plenty for it. The problem is that the funds go to telecom companies, suppliers of computer hardware and software and, occasionally, technicians.

That's the business model. Changing it as you describe would be a mammoth "pay per view" scheme, which doesn't exactly sell like hotcakes on TV. If sites charged us to visit them, most people would change channels, as it were. There's no shortage of information sources.

As someone who used to make a good living as a writer and editor, I don't like the present setup any better than you do, but this is reality.

The only change I can envision that would reward the newspeople who need to be properly compensated for their work, but instead are being fired in droves (and replaced, if at all, by novices in Bangalore), is by instituting something comparable to the British TV licensing fee -- with a mandate for the funds to be spent on news production. If the money just went to media companies, those huge conglomerates would use it as they use their other income, mainly to buy more media companies and overpay top management.

[bobtr900]

Although the British model makes some sense I'm absolutely convinced Rupert Murdoch and NBC/MSNBC,CNN et.al. would find a way to corrupt it, guaranteed. Then we would have nothing more than we have had for the past eight years.

I trust my fellow bloggers/posters far more than I will ever trust the Repub party controlled MSM and their total commitment to extreme greed and their Nazi like propaganda strategy. I'll read/watch people/sites like Alternate Radio, Amy Goodman, Moyers, Alternet, HuffPo, Salon.com, Joe Conason, Glenn Greenwald, etc.

I barely even watch TV anymore, except for Bill Moyers. We all know that the Rethugs even corrupted PBS, via the FCC, Michael Powell, Ken Tomlinson, Ken Feree and Cheryl Halperin. So even PBS is useless. We'd be better off without it, and it's oil and mining company commercials.

Even my own religion has joined the "death for profits" mentality of the Repubs. So I don't trust them either. I never watch EWTN anymore because it's like listening to Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and GWB. Killing Iraqis for their oil and for corporate profits is a blood sport they all enjoy.

We the people have been screwed, and big time, by the Repubs. Fascism, Big Business and Big Religion have control of our nation and I do not expect they will ever let go of it.

No, I think the MSM is way too far gone. Any chance for recovery seems near zero.

[aster6]

I too cruise many news sites each morning. But I find 1 or 2 articles on each site that I want to actually read. This is why I would never pay for a subscription to any one site.
How about a news portal that would spider search every reputable news site on the web and provide the content all in one place. Now that is a service I might be willing to pay for.

However I agree that news, usually attributed to unnamed "sources" is becoming all too common
This is not news, it is propaganda.
The news providers need to get back to real journalism, and skip the hype and political games playing
I do believe the new organizations play a large part in our politics and control of even our elections

This needs to stop. Objectivity in news needs to be brought back, along with real information,.

[ObjectiveRealist]

[
I too cruise many news sites each morning. But I find 1 or 2 articles on each site that I want to actually read. This is why I would never pay for a subscription to any one site. How about a news portal that would spider search every reputable news site on the web and provide the content all in one place.
]
Ubuntu Linux is fairly easy to find now on new, powerful laptop computers. Speaking of which, users of GNU/Linux can write a script based on the "wget" command to spider whatever sites we want, which the "cron" program can execute every morning when our coffee automatically starts brewing. Both are "one-liners" and as easy as pie to write from the user's manuals, which are provided as "man pages" by typing "man [program_name]" at the command line. The advantage over "outsourcing" your spider is simple: control. Sure, you have to learn something, but not much, and the alternative is having to *request* any changes to your search. This kind of thing is better done using one's own property, under one's own complete control, not keep getting "Blago" news because your outsourced searches website "is experiencing technical difficulties" that prevents updating search terms.

Just as "open source" is becoming the most popular model for government, the press needs to embrace open source software, because it's the only model that enables their services to be provided in a way that is appealing to the free market.

[Samarkandb]

I've worked in newspapers for a long time, and the rule of thumb has always been that the money people pay for the paper covers ink, newsprint and other production costs. Why would you charge Web readers for something they're not using?

The actual news is financed by advertising, and Web advertising isn't growing as fast as Web readership. Sooner or later, it will. Or it won't, and we'll do something else.

[Helzapoppin]

I hope that 2009 will be the year when newspapers stop carrying water for political figures.

I hope that 2009 will be the year when newspapers start actually covering important news and stop burying serious and important stories because (among other rationalizations) the story is "too complicated" for readers.

I hope that 2009 will be the year when newspapers learn that "some say," "anonymous sources tell," and "sources close to" do not pass the smell test of respectable and legitimate journalism.

I hope that 2009 will be the year when newspapers actually investigate stories instead of transcribing press releases.

[BertrandRussell]

Good content requires talent to create it and that talent must be supported in order to be able to create the content. Content creators must be compensated. But consumers are not willing to pay for most content. They will either enjoy the content for free or forgo it entirely. Either way the talent is not compensated.

Simply put, if HuffPo were to charge for access I'd just go somewhere else... unless the charge was congruent to the value HuffPo plays in my life in comparison to food, clothing, shelter, or a smile from my kids. A penny a day? Hmmm... maybe.