What survival strategies should these dailies adopt? If some papers don’t survive, how will readers get news about the local school board or county executive?
Publish a newspaper worth $2 a day, the price of a cup of coffee, and $5 on Sunday — and raise the quality. (Joel Kramer)
Local papers should charge online because they don’t have as many competitors for the good local reporting they do. (Steven Brill)
“If we were turning out stories that are sloppy or have mistakes or hadn’t been fact-checked, I don’t think people would read us.” (Christine Yeres)
Forget Micropayments -- Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content: Just as online users currently pay an Internet provider $30 or more a month for their computers to access the Internet, and perhaps a monthly fee for all the music they want from a service like Rhapsody, they'll also pay a monthly fee for all the news and blog content on the Web. Only the last fee is voluntary, and it will be up to publishers to educate the public on the importance of paying for content online.[act.: Keep Internet news open with a universal online payment system: If the tides are to be reversed and people are to be persuaded to pay for information again, any online payment program that is established should not erect pay walls between publications. Paid online content would be a huge step for newspapers, and a reversal of current policy, so great thought and care are required to ensure that it is a step taken in the right way. But as online advertising revenue slows, and newspapers' very survival is threatened, could paid online content indeed be the solution?]
[act.1: Will paid content work? Two cautionary tales from 2004]
