Exactly so – I’d pay money to visit Belmont Club for the wisdom of the content and the qualiity of the community feedback, but I would not for HuffPo.

I pay for WSJ because it offers a collection of information I cannot find elsewhere, that is reality and fact-based, but I do not pay for WaPo because of the exact opposite.

I also wont pay for something I find culturally repugnant, for example I stopped listening to NPR at 0635PST on 9/11/01 precisely because I heard Daniel Schurr reflexively blame America, in the first reports.

Want ads, car adds, apartment ads, grocery ads, movie ads, real estate ads. I know people who have never read the editorial page who buy the paper and that has been the papers saving. Once they put that junk on the front page instead of real news they were more or less doomed but the problem isn’t the medium the problem is the content and the people who make the content decisions.

“According to press reports, 5 out of ten Americans agree with the President’s policies.”

Who get’s the royalties then?

Plagiarism is tough to prove, if smartly done. You re-word things, pop in a few original quotes, disguise sources in a way that doesn’t provide a clear trail to where they originated.

Politician “X” gives a speech, it’s on television, lots of people were there. Who’s to say you weren’t? You pick up the quote, maybe even change a word here or there, paraphrase it, etc.

When the time comes where anyone has to pay money for attributing information, writers and editors and bloggers and linkers are going to come up with incredible ways to avoid those fees.

Newspapers themselves have already been doing this for years. A story appears in a competing newspaper, and in order to avoid being totally scooped a reporter on the city desk is given the assignment of making a quick call for a fresh original quote or two. Then the reporter writes up the piece in ten minutes from clips and goes out to lunch.

Nope

Newspapers publish the funnies (comic strips), which entertain kids of all ages. The next good comic strip could be worth millions to its syndicaters and incidentally, the artist, especially if it lends itself to production of plush toys and window stickers. The sports section is probably the most popular section. The sportswriters have to be truthful because sports devotes get their sports news from many sources and therefore, will smell a rat if the writer tries to pull something (see above). The same for the business section — reporters have to play it straight there, too.

Shoppers like the ads and coupons. Women and girls who like to shop get their own section and apparently help subsidize the funny papers (and the crossword puzzle). Not being a shopper myself, I don’t get it; but Mr. Bother was always happy to see the Frye’s ad in the Friday paper.

The more I think about it, I’m not sure who wants to look at the rest of it.

The biggest problem with large papers is the volume. The Washington Post is far too large. I only check the A section and maybe Style. Others only look at the sport section. The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s people are searching for financial news and are will pay for that.

In order to pay for the printing plants and the writer, papers need large advertising revenue. The loss they are suffering is because their product, news is not worth paying for when we have the net, radio and TV all for free.

Mostly we get is analysis or punditry and that is really a dime a dozen. Yet pundits get paid very well.

Some we love are amusing like Lilek’s and we will pay for that.

I agree that printing costs can be reduced when the plant is used for books, comics, and multiple papers. Some have changed to that model. Not WaPo.

This is similar to publisher’s woes. They produce books but can’t get a lot to get shelf time to get exposure.

Baen started webscriptions and considering the quality of some of their writers, the buyers choose to buy ebooks and set the price. Baen does not encrypt and is against DRM and cheap and has been successful.

They allow samples to get interest and then people buy.

Print on Demand for books are starting to become viable and Print on Demand for papers is possible. The problem is what to know what to print. Will the newsstand allow you to read the paper to decide what to print?

Do you instead go with your standard and only print the local, business or sport sections?

The Kindle solves reading papers on subways. You can download your paper and read on the way to work. That will help in the cities among those who do not drive but that is not the majority of people.

Papers can survive but they have to slim down drastically. Multiuse the print plants. Stop paying salaries that are extreme. Most papers only may pay small sums to writers and columnists only got money since they were syndicated like the comics in many papers. That reduces the opinion makers to a few. The web allowed anyone to become opinion makers and that had expanded the punditry class but hopefully will reduce the compensation.

The question is can the papers slim down to print news and info that people want and get paid just for that or with smaller ad revenue? I am skeptical. Lots of local papers are free and have been subsidized by the ads and that is not successful. They do not pay the writer a lot but the printing costs do consume a lot of money. They pay a pittance for delivery.

Maybe the solution is to produce the broadsheet and reduce the news to one sheet for a penny and pay the boy to sit on corners and offer it in the cities.

Maybe the solution is like Instapundit. Short one-liners with links to get the full story. I do think a digital format like Kindle is the future for news.

In the coming year the dying newspaper industry will probably explore two tracks in order to survive. The first and most obvious is for newspapers to acquire some kind of public funding or bailout money to keep providing the “essential service”. But that is unsustainable.

Respectfully disagree. With the Dems controlling the entire fed govt–and a veto-proof majority in the Senate–and the public having accepted the gift of tens of billions of dollars to GM and Chrysler with no detectable problem, the way is clear for Obama to subsidize all leftist papers for the rest of our lives.

Since no one was able to keep the Dems from passing the clearly unconstitutional GM and Chrysler gifts, it seems clear that they don’t regard the Constitution as binding on them. In that case not one single legal restraint remains against the government giving tens of millions to leftist papers each year.

Editorial content is as the late Lord Thomson said “The stuff between the ads” neatly summing up his generally successful approach to the newspaper business. Paper is still a superior technology. You can take it to the park, the beach, the subway, the crapper. It doesn’t need batteries or electricity. It doesn’t short out in the rain and if I get tired of carrying it I can throw it away, line the birdcage, train the dog, start the fire etc.