Results matching “paying the price for”

The Washington Post has decided to cancel its plans to host private, off-the-record dinner parties for political lobbyists at the home of its publisher after criticism from the newsroom at the suggestion that their services were effectively been sold. Publisher Katharine Weymouth was to host dinners that would give paying lobbyists and business leaders access to officials from the Obama administration and Congress, as well as Post journalists.

Politico first reported the story yesterday after obtaining a flier promoting the events that had been given to a healthcare lobbyist. The flier was entitled "Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate" and advertised events with a maximum of 20 guests to discuss major White House policy initiatives, which participating firms could co-sponsor for $25,000 per event, with up to two sponsors per session. There was also an offer for 11 for the price of 10. The theme of the first July dinner was to be health care reform, and WaPo guaranteed the attendance of Obama administration officials and members of Congress as well as reporters.

A lobbying campaign in the UK has called for the government to up the penalties for online filesharing, a practice in which over 7million UK residents regularly partake. The campaign, echoing that of the French government, takes an economical outlook, claiming that illegal filesharing is costing thousands of jobs in the UK and is denting the Kingdom's already slumping GDP. Is this a similar phenomenon to that which is causing UK and Western newspapers to shed staff at an unprecedented rate? Can newspapers, whose bottom line many consider to be suffering from digital content, learn from the plight of the music and entertainment industries affected by filesharing?

Yes and no. 

It is becoming increasingly clear that a proportion of general news content is going to be put behind some kind of a pay wall in upcoming months. Several publishers have expressed their intentions to start charging, and several third parties want to help them do it. Journalists don't seem to want it, it seems pretty unlikely that readers would want it, so how are publishers going to succeed? Can it restore value to good journalism which is increasingly becoming a commodity? The Editors Weblog takes a look at some of the different services on offer and strategies being considered.

Journalism Online

First, Journalism Online, a start-up founded in April by industry experts Steve Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery, has taken facilitating charging for online content as one of its core goals. Brill made a presentation at the NAA-organised newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago on May 28 at which Journalism Online's mission was stated as enabling "news organizations to restore the optimal mix of circulation and advertising revenue necessary to finance original reporting and editing" hence giving them the chance to "realize the revenue they deserve--and can command--from readers and distributors for their digital content."

Journalism Online is marketing its proposal as an e-commerce platform. The idea is that it would make premium content from multiple publishers easily accessible to readers and allow annual, monthly subscriptions, day passes or single articles. There will also be all-you-can-read bundling options. Publishers will decide what content they want to charge for, how much to charge (though it is unclear how all-you-can-read prices will be decided) and how to charge. In the presentation, Brill suggests $50-60 a year and $5-6 a month for small to large city papers, but he stressed that this was an arbitrary choice and clearly the price would depend on how much content the publisher put behind the pay wall. He had previously suggested $15 a month for an all-you-can-read subscription.

The company maintains that implementing its system will not lead to a substantial loss in traffic or ad revenue, claiming that papers would be able to keep 88% of page views and 91% of ad revenue, as any paid content would be part of a hybrid model. In his examples, Brill demonstrates how he believes a paper could essentially double its income. Brill has also stressed that Journalism Online will incorporate lots of sampling. He told Nieman Lab's Zachery Seward that Journalism Online's assumptions are that 5-10% of current monthly unique visitors will be willing to pay for content; that 95 percent of those paying customers will choose subscriptions over micropayments; and that after subscribing, those readers will view 30-40 percent more pages than non-paying readers.

Overall, the company seems to be presenting its service as a chance for newspapers to focus on their best customers, offering a premium service to those who are prepared to pay. At the Chicago meeting, Journalism Online also emphasised the advantages of paid online content in terms of preserving the print product: it is "about the value proposition of print... about print subscriber acquisition and retention costs."

ViewPass

Another third party service was presented at the NAA-organised meeting in Chicago: ViewPass. It is the brainchild of Alan Mutter and Ridgely Evers, and could be implemented in 9 months at a cost of $6 million. The idea is that newspaper readers would be required to register once with ViewPass and it would then track their activity across participating websites.

Like Journalism Online, it would aim to offer readers the chance to purchase premium online content from multiple sources, with potential for subscriptions, micropayments and bundling. Essentially, the ways in which it differs is that ViewPass would be industry-owned, giving publishers the chance to (hopefully) share profits in the business itself, and it most crucially it would allow users to 'pay' for their content with their time or their information instead of with cash, because of their increased value to advertisers. In fact, ViewPass would focus on presenting readers that were attractive to advertisers for highly targeted ads. Mutter himself is not enthusiastic about charging for much online content, suggesting to Nieman Lab that it would only work for specialist content.

Circlabs

The creation of another start up was announced the day before the Chicago meeting: CircLabs, founded by Bill Densmore, Jeffrey Vander Clute, Martin Langeveld and Joe Bergeron. Its first product, code-named Circulate, aims to "offer a solution" to publishers who are experimenting with micropayments and subscriptions, suggesting that they should charge for content which is "both scarce in nature and of high utility to a segment of the audience." CircLabs is also focussed on developing opportunities for "high-value" advertising revenue, and plans to incorporate personalised news services. Further details are yet to appear.

Efforts of individual publishers

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has announced that all the company's newspapers would be charging within a year. It is looking at bundling content, according to chief digital officer Jonathan Miller, such as putting all the media conglomerate's New York-based content into one subscription package. One of the company's prime assets, the Wall Street Journal, is proof that paid premium content does work, although of a specifically financial nature. The paper is to expand its paid online options, with plans to introduce micropayments later this year along with a further level of premium subscriptions. Murdoch suggested that the company wants to "test" a pay model on some of its stronger properties first, and there has been speculation that the Sunday Times will be among these. The paid online content debate, although definitely present in the UK, has not been as strong as across the Atlantic, and it would be interesting to see what sort of reaction such a move would provoke.

MediaNews Group is planning to charge online under the belief that "we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free." A memo to staff from CEO Dean Singleton and president Jody Lodovic suggested that a part-paid strategy is in the works, and made it clear that the company is intending to charge for existing content rather than for new products or services.

The New York Times is apparently looking at two different ways in which it could charge for online content. The first would be somewhat similar to the Financial Times' model, whereby readers could surf the site without charge until a page-view or word limit were reached, when a 'metre' would start running and it would charge a user for the rest of their time spent. (The FT allows 10 free articles per user per month, then demands a subscription.) This would have the advantage of not putting specific content behind a paywall, and therefore not angering journalists.

The other option is a 'membership' scheme: readers would donate money and subsequently be invited into a "New York Times community," which would offer them free merchandise and other benefits. Possibly a tiered membership scheme could be implemented. When these proposals were discussed, Bill Keller told staff that a decision would be made by the end of June. The NYT is wary following its failed TimesSelect experience back in 2007 and seems determined to find a solution that will not damage its significant ad revenue.

Potential obstacles: search and antitrust

Currently many people find their news through search engines such as Google, and for articles to get good Google rankings and appear higher up in search results, they cannot be behind a paywall. Newspapers must strive to find an appropriate solution to this when they start charging: the Wall Street Journal's tactic of allowing its paid content to be accessed free via Google is clearly not fair to its paying customers, and is a definite deterrent to potential subscribers.

Antitrust regulations in the US effectively prevent publishers from coming to a joint agreement on when and how they should start charging for content. At the newspaper executives' meeting in Chicago on May 28, an antitrust lawyer was present to make sure all the discussion was legal. Poynter analyst Rick Edmonds suggested that the use of a third party "vendor" such as Journalism Online could be the solution to these concerns. Journalism Online has taken on David Boies and Ted Olson for antitrust advice.

So, is it going to work? And how?

Undoubtedly, implementing paid content is going to be a considerable challenge and is likely to involve substantial experimentation. Newspapers need to consider what exactly they would want to charge for, for example whether they could create a new paid service or put what is currently free behind a pay wall. It seems as if it would be easier to persuade people to pay for something new, rather than telling them they have to start paying for something previously free. But then people might decide that they are happy with what they get now and that they do not want to pay for anything extra. A paper with a highly developed website such as the New York Times could possibly offer basic news free but keep its interactive graphics and other more innovative content for its premium customers.

As yet, Journalism Online seems to be ahead of the pack with regards to third party services. No papers have publicly signed on but Brill told Seward that he had already spoken to about half of those at the Chicago meeting. In terms of connections and credibility of its founders, Journalism Online has a head start. ViewPass and CircLabs do seem to be onto something, however, with their focus on offering consumers as targets for higher-revenue advertising and effectively allowing them to pay for their news by looking at ads. Could these companies coexist, or is there only room for one?

A crucial factor which should not be underestimated in any attempt to charge online is ease of use for the consumer. People will be far more likely to part with their cash if doing so is simple and straightforward. For this reason, sign-in-once and all-you-can-read offers are likely to appeal. And once people are paying, the level of service should reflect this: good journalism presented attractively and accessibly. An element of personalisation would also seem worth paying for.

Can paid online content 'save' newspapers? If Journalism Online's figures are correct, it looks like it could make a significant difference to a newspaper's fortunes. The next few months will be telling in terms of experimentation and competition between proposals, but it will take some years for the definitive answer to this question to be realised.

Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, finally made public the new Kindle DX yesterday at Pace University. Since news got out about the larger e-reader, there has been a wave of discussions on how it could be the salvation of newspapers.

The Kindle DX is marketed for the textbook, newspaper and magazine industries with a wide, 9.7-inch screen. It has enough memory space to hold 3,500 books, which does sound appealing to a student's aching back. However, whether this is really going to save the newspaper industry, remains the big question. Some say it will, others say no, "not a chance."

A new report produced by the publishing arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers - the world's largest professional services company - in conjunction with the World Association of Newspapers (WAN), examines the outlook for newspapers as they seek to realign themselves within a digital framework and minimise the impact of the global recession.

The study identifies interactivity, specialisation and new business models as being key to ensuring the survival of the newspaper in an online age.

According to the New York Times, Amazon.com Inc. may be preparing to launch its new, larger Kindle this week.

Plastic Logic Ltd., which is planning to give Amazon a run for its money by the time it introduces its e-reader in 2010 (pictured below), may have a harder time of upsetting the market leader than it originally envisioned.

New start-up company Journalism Online LLC has caused a significant stir in the media industry, and probably more behind the scenes. Founders Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz and Leo Hindery have put together a proposal including promises to facilitate payment for online news, making it simple for publications to offer joint subscriptions as well as articles on a single basis using micropayment. They are also offering to negotiate on behalf of its members for licensing fees from search engines and other websites, and to provide member publishers with information on what tactics are working best in terms of building circulation and revenue.

In conversation with the start-up's consultant Merrill Brown, what stands out is that despite its distinguished founders, this company really is a new start-up, and although its members are in discussion with many big publishers and technology firms, details about how the business will actually operate are not yet clear. Brown stressed that Journalism Online is talking to publishers about "precisely what they want to see in this system, so that we get the specs right first:" it wants, sensibly, to have a good idea of the direction in which it is heading before proceeding. Details of which publishers the company has talked to have not yet been released, but Brown said "there's nobody on the list that you would be surprised at." It is clear that they are aiming high: "we all believe that getting some globally significant, influential publications or TV outlets or anybody who's in web publishing to come on board and embrace new strategy initiatives is going to be very important to our long term success."

Paid online content: all you can read

The decision to push paid online content is arguably the most ground-breaking element of the company's proposals. Journalism Online will create a system whereby consumers will be able to purchase "annual or monthly subscriptions, day passes, and single articles from multiple publishers" all through one website. Brill told PaidContent that the site will have "a fair amount of complexity, including, for example, publishers who want to make sure their print subscribers get a discount or don't pay for the online subscription."

"We argue that very few high quality products have ever been delivered for free, and neither should news" 

Pushing joint subscriptions would seem to be more effective than single paper offers, which have not had much success in the past for general interest papers such as the New York Times. Brill in fact proposed that the New York Times single handedly start charging for content in a memo to the paper written in October 2008, leaked to the press early this year, but it seems that the Times did not take this advice on board. Brown said he believes that it was a "natural evolution of Brill's thinking to try to create a larger solution involving more people." In fact, "we argue that very few high quality products have ever been delivered for free, and neither should this," Brown explained. And even if the income brought in from charging consumers is not vast, he added that "we think that over time, page circulation will bump up CPM and make advertising more valuable so that people will be a position to win on both sides of the coin." It is not just a US-based plan, Brown confirmed that they would like to have English language publishers from outside the US relatively early.

Publishers decide pricing

Pricing would be decided by the publishers, Brown explained. Steve Brill has suggested a figure of $15 a month for an all-you-can-read subscription, but Brown was clear that this was just something that Brill was "throwing out there." In reality, he continued, such a price would have to be decided on by the consortium of publishers. Equally, it will be up to the different publishers to decide exactly what content they want to charge for or not. They could, Brown suggested, create "web premium products," or "some may choose to have certain vertical categories such as sports behind a wall." In fact, he commented, "that's not really up to us." Others have suggested that it is far easier to charge for new content than that which is already free. And a part free, part paid model has been widely advocated, for example, maybe unsurprisingly, by Wall Street Journal Online executive editor Alan Murray.

Investigating what works and what doesn't

A crucial part of the project that has been given less attention is the company's plan to aggregate knowledge and gather data about "what works and what doesn't" with the aim of providing consulting services to struggling publishers. With this in mind, Brown said that "we are trying to encourage our partners to try lots of different things in an effort to build data." He hopes that within a year, Journalism Online will have "the collective experience of many different publishers which offer many different kinds of products." He expressed surprise at the current lack of this kind of data: "not much has been done."

Negotiating with search engines

The company will also be pursuing a copyright initiative to "negotiate wholesale licensing and royalty fees with intermediaries such as search engines and other websites that currently base much of their business models on referrals of readers to the original content on newspaper, magazine and online news websites." Brown was clear that set decisions of what this will entail have not yet been made, but explained that the goal was to "bring the industry together under appropriate pricing schemes and distribution schemes. We think there is strength in numbers in negotiations with search engines aggregators and others." Incidentally, another organisation planning to offer a similar service based on sharing ad revenue, the Fair Syndication Consortium, has just come into existence and the Associated Press recently announced plans to track its content more thoroughly and address offences more aggressively.

"We think there is strength in numbers in negotiations with search engines aggregators and others"

The project should be off the ground in the autumn, with "some partners in place," specified Brown. "The magnitude of the experiment that we will put in place is not entirely mapped out," he added, but "we will be running a piece of our programme." Seed funding is being provided by one of the founders, Leo Hindery, and his private equity firm InterMedia Advisors. A call for a first round of funding will be a natural progression, commented Brown, "this will look like a real company before too long!" He also added that once the company has more funding, it plans to do "a lot of marketing on behalf of the publisher participants."

Inspired by iTunes?

Steve Brill suggested in the interview with PaidContent that he was inspired by the iTunes model, and indeed the parallels between the initiatives are striking: both involving the intervention of an unrelated third party into an industry struggling to make consumers pay for their work. Brown explained that "we are taking broad strategic solace" from the iTunes model and learning what they can: "there are a lot of things about it that are encouraging and instructive." One of the main ways in which iTunes is instructive, he pointed out, is for "ease of use, which is something we always have to keep our eye on." And indeed with this kind of venture, making it as easy as possible for the consumer is crucial, as many people have little patience with complex payment procedures. Another encouraging point is that iTunes managed to bring together many different contributing producers of music and entertainment: just as Journalism Online hopes to do with publishers.

Steve Jobs succeeded, overwhelmingly. Will Brill and co?

The project sounds like quite an undertaking, and media coverage has been mixed over its chances of success. It will involve an unprecedented amount of collaboration between publishers to decide on rates and other aspects of such a system, which will be a considerable challenge. Previous micropayment schemes, including one started by Brill himself in 2000, have failed, but Brown believes that the time is right, due to the "predicament" in which publishers find themselves today: "I think that there's a very clear consensus that projects like this are extremely timely right now." And indeed, many different ideas about whether to and how to charge for content have been proposed in recent months, although this has been coupled with significant opposition from those who continue to favour an ad-based model and much reticence to put content behind a pay wall.

"I think the publishing industry gets how important this is. We're really inspired by the enthusiasm"

However, the response from publishers has been positive, according to Brown. "I think the publishing industry gets how important this is. We're really inspired by the enthusiasm from lots of important publishers across different sectors who have welcomed this." One major factor in Journalism Online's favour is its founders' experience and reputation. To embark on this sort of venture with any hope of succeeding requires good contacts and much influence, as well as in-depth knowledge of the industry: all of which these men have. It seems essential that a third party should step in to organise and implement this kind of scheme, hopefully uniting publishers, and this effort has as good a chance as any. It is impossible to say whether such a project could save newspapers, but without doubt, any additional income would be more than welcome, and establishing a firm precedent for paying for news could be highly beneficial in the future.

Detroit Media Partnership has announced that it will launch a trial with Plastic Logic to distribute the company's e-reader as part of its plan to convert to a more web-centric distribution model on 30 March, reported NewsandTech.com. Although the product will not be released until 2010, DMP has obtained 100 of the large display e-readers which it will trial with readers of the electronic editions of The Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press.

DMP CEO Dave Hunke said that the publisher is working with Plastic Logic to develop a lease plan that would enable DMP subscribers to rent the readers, and DMP will use the next few months to establish pricing and availability details. DMP has been cutting down its print distribution costs to focus more on digital news: in December, the publisher announced that it would cut home delivery of its papers to Thursday, Friday and Sunday. The two publications will continue to be printed on the days they are not delivered, but joined into a single paper.

At the newsXchange 2008 conference in Valencia, a new business model for business reporting has been urged. At the conference, British journalist and founder of the Work Foundation (the former Industrial Society), Will Hutton said, "We take the truth as handed down by the business elite, especially in the US... There is an obligation to be tougher in the questions we ask."

Duncan Stanworth of BBC Monitoring reports that Hutton also said, "All of us, including journalists, suspended our judgment and we are paying the price."

Media outlets had been mouthpieces for "neoconservative, neoliberal" pro-deregulation economists over the last 15 years, said Jeremy Rifkin of the Foundation on Economic Trends.

Al-Jazeera TV political analyst Marwan Bishara said the crisis heralded a time for "soul searching" among journalists. "How far are we in bed with power?" he asked.

Onno Ruding from the Centre for European Policy Studies said, "Journalists should devote time to longer-term matters and seek the views of two or three sides. Select those voices and give them a wider audience." Ruding went on to say that there was a risk of going from the "extreme optimism" of the boom years to "eternal depression".



Source: BBC Monitoring research 21 November 2008

The mobile news market in the US will soon be ripe for mass consumption, according to Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times.

"It's been a runaway success," said Samuels, speaking of the growth of the Times' mobile site. "Numbers will continue to grow, there is a lot of industry dynamic supporting this."

The Times' mobile site, which drew 500,000 page views in January 2007, received over 10 million hits by December of the same year, and soared up to 19 million views in May 2008.

Although "most of the consumption on our site is through high end mobile devices so far" such as BlackBerry phones, Treo mobile devices and iPhones, the market is rapidly growing for the mass market, especially amongst commuters.

Generally speaking, the consumption patterns are similar for the online and mobile editions: business and politics are very popular, as well as blogs or most-emailed stories. "But amongst the mobile applications we've been rolling out, some of them are particularly tailored to the mobile user such as the mobile user real estate listings," said Samuels, which enable users on the go to receive listings based on specific criteria such as number of bedrooms, price...

"In America, I think the general web browsing for the mobile site has been at an advantage in terms of user behavior and pricing over SMS products," said Samuels.  All the Times' text message alerts link off to the mobile site to encourage users to browse it and read the whole story.

According to Samuels, text messaging will continue to grow for specific uses, such as stock listings or weather forecasts (see this study about text messaging and mobile usage), but "the predominant, long-term mass consumption, will be more than likely be browsing just because that's such a dominant behavior here in the US," he said. Still, "Text messaging for content adoption will grow in the US, we are simply well behind other markets like Europe and Asia."

As of now, the Times' hasn't created any position dedicated to editing or rewriting content for mobile consumption. "I don't think we'll hire specific people to tailor content for mobile per se," said Samuels.

However, most mobile articles are slightly edited upstream in the production process, to make headlines appropriate for mobile devices - for example, an E-hed for mobile can be made to stand alone without a picture, or pictures can be cropped to fit the device.

Is mobile news more adapted to local news outlets that can send out locally relevant alerts to users? "I think it is most definitely appropriate for them but by no means exclusive for them," said Samuels. National brands can also establish themselves on the local mobile news market. In the second half of the year, Samuels plans to roll out restaurant listings, in addition to its show time and weather services.

The Times is also developing news alerts for scheduled news events, such as the Olympics or the presidential elections in the US. For the Olympics, users can sign up to receive various updates including postings from the Rings blog, Top-10 medal count charts or the schedule of events.

While most of the Times' mobile news alert services are free, its mobile games and products will remain paid-for for the foreseeable future. "Through experience and industry research, still the model of paying for a mobile game is something that users are willing to engage in," said Samuels.

Source: Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times

21,000 new subscribers have signed up for TimesSelect since The New York Times has made its paid-for service free for academics. How does this affect considerations of online business models, and does it mean the upcoming TimesReader will be successful?

Editor of the London Evening Standard Veronica Wadley says that readers are returning to the paid paper, after a period during which they read and evaluated London’s other freesheets.

Since August 2006, three new freesheets, 24 Timer, Nyhedsavisen and Dato, have been launched in Denmark. That brings the total number of free papers up to 5, for a country of only 5 million inhabitants. Christina Ove Holm, journalism analyst and writer for Nyhedsbrevet Danske Presse, spoke to the Editors Weblog in an interview about the ongoing ‘freesheet war’, considering the effects it had on the traditional newspaper industry, the benefits and inconveniences for the population, as well as the future for free papers.

Yahoo has been arguably the Internet leader over past years, however stock price is down 35% this year. Bambi Francisco at Marketwatch writes that Yahoo was an innovator in social media but had a timing issue allowing MySpace, Facebook and YouTube to dominate the market.

In what appears to be another attempt to be innovative, the New York Times is joining forces with Microsoft to develop an electronic newspaper reader called Times Reader that will try to capture the feel of reading the print version. The operative phrase here is "attempt to be innovative." Still, there is at least one positive development for the newspaper industry in this attempt.

News Corp. is in the market for acquiring next-generation Web companies that could be integrated into its increasingly popular social networking site MySpace. 

America’s cable industry was up in arms last week over a report by the Federal Communications Commission that found subscribers would save significant amounts of money if they were given the option to subscribe to only the channels they want. Obviously, such a report isn’t appealing to traditional media that has depended on subscription packages for so long. But to most consumers, the concept is probably pretty appealing.

So what can the newspaper industry learn from this “a la carte” idea?

Whew! What a turbulent year for the newspaper industry. One would think that after so many developments, positive and negative, that the storm would be ebbing. But 2005 may be just the beginning.

Below are eight trends that the Editors Weblog feels will have major effects on newsrooms in 2006:

1. Print/Online integration becoming the norm
2. Threats against investigative journalism growing
3. More transparency needed
4. Breaches appearing in the free news ideology
5. News agencies competing with newspapers
   
6. Social networking: advantages for newspapers
   
7. Mobile TV threatening mobile news
8. News organizations becoming entertainment companies

Explanations are followed by links to previous related postings. 

Please feel free to comment and add your own ideas.

Happy New Year to all!

 

The speculative sale of American newspaper giant Knight Ridder, or break up thereof, does not only reflect years of newspaper circulation slides and huge profit margin demands by shareholders. More relevantly in today's new media world, it demonstrates the original carelessness of the newspaper industry in underestimating the effects the Internet would have as well as the difficulties newspapers currently face in racing to catch up.

Major news organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of integrating citizen contributions in their news. But will the MSM eventually begin to compensate for its readers' content?

Steve Outing thinks that "It's almost time to pay up for Citizen Journalism." 

If our last posting about the obstacles in the way of online newspaper success made you curious, below are a few ideas for the future of online business models. The results will ultimately benefit journalism.

Vice President of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, Mort Goldstrom made a quote in an article about Craigslist at SmartMoney.com that deserves some attention. He said, "I think that newspapers have been very quick to adapt online."

Mr. Goldstrom is definitely too quick to pat newspapers on the back.

If our last posting about the obstacles in the way of online newspaper success made you curious, below are a few ideas for the future of online business models. The results will ultimately benefit journalism.

Vice President of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, Mort Goldstrom made a quote in an article about Craigslist at SmartMoney.com that deserves some attention. He said, "I think that newspapers have been very quick to adapt online."

Mr. Goldstrom is definitely too quick to pat newspapers on the back.

If our last posting about the obstacles in the way of online newspaper success made you curious, below are a few ideas for the future of online business models. The results will ultimately benefit journalism.

Vice President of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, Mort Goldstrom made a quote in an article about Craigslist at SmartMoney.com that deserves some attention. He said, "I think that newspapers have been very quick to adapt online."

Mr. Goldstrom is definitely too quick to pat newspapers on the back.