Micky Kaus at Slate suggests a solution for the paid-online content dilemma newspapers are facing. He recalls how when television hit the scene, people never thought they would pay for it. But for some time now, most people pay for cable TV, even if it's just "basic." So why wouldn't people pay a bit for packaged news on the web?

The Editors Weblog pondered a similar question at the launch of TimesSelect, the New York Times paid-online program, asking why more newspapers had not joined NYT in the pay model at the same time for the same price and suggesting that newspapers work together to curb the circulation decline and adapt to the Internet.

One comment on the posting responded that this would be in violation of federal anti-trust laws. As a like deal would be price fixing, this comment is probably true.

But Kaus' plan, copying the cable model, would work legally for newspapers.

It would not, however, work practically for two main reasons:

1. The essence of news: Joining a bunch of newspapers, or news organizations, under one roof is redundant. Major international news is similar around the globe and major national news is similar around the country.

Notice how basic cable plans include about 5 or 6 24-hour news stations (which is essentially what a newspaper becomes online). Each diversify their product with distinct commentary, anchors with different views and different guests, the same thing newspapers do with their op-ed pages, but their news is more or less the same.

Kaus suggests that a "Basic MSM" package would include "dozens, maybe hundreds, of papers." But if they all have pretty much the same national and international news, why is such a package necessary? Who is going to have time to read the op-eds of so many papers to hear all the different voices?

Yes, papers still have the power of local coverage and lifestyle that distinguishes them from the next. But how many readers from Philadelphia that sign up for packaged online news are going to care what happened yesterday in the city government of Sacramento?

2. The essence of the Internet: "Basic MSM" is next to impossible because of the way in which the World Wide Web functions. Basic cable may give you 100, even 500 channels. But on the Internet, there are literally billions of websites and probably hundreds of thousands of news sources from local up to the largest news agencies.

How long would it take all of these websites and numerous Internet providers around the world to work out packaged deals?

The consumer is in control online. Whatever they want or need is on demand. The MSM is just waking up to this fact, as seen in the example of television stations streaming their programs to be downloaded whenever.

If a consumer is looking for breaking news, how will she know which paper is going to break it? What if that particular paper is not part of her package?

Despite these problems with the "Basic MSM" plan, Kaus does offer some beneficial advice. One "universal registration" so that readers would not have to fill in their life story at every publication they would like to read. Now that's a good idea!

Source: Slate