Newspapers and Nymphos

Dying newspapers haven’t been coughing much lately, but most of them aren’t getting cured, they’re just between spasms. And like others who face The Final Diagnosis, newspapers are looking for miracle cures and support groups, trying to strike a bargain with the inevitable.

One of the most popular of the current round of miracles cures is “monetizing content,” which is how a newspaper person whose formative years were spent in accounting class instead of the police beat says “let’s charge for online stories.”

Never mind that the print product has gigantic production expenses and debt service no longer supported by giant advertising revenue. Never mind that the “audience” peddled for so many years to advertisers is skewed towards Baby Boomers who don’t boom much anymore. Never mind that as an industry, newspapering’s response to the incoming digital tide has been to stand at water’s edge yelling Halt! Let’s charge for online stories.

Well, let’s. It’s a swell idea, because folks are used to paying for the print edition, so they’ll pay to read content online, right?

And if some evil folks misappropriate our content or sell ads around links to it without giving us a cut, we’ll sue them, right?

Besides, we’re the main local source of information, ads and news, right?

You betcha! as Gov. Go Go would say.

Yeah, but. . .

It’s too late to start charging for content, online or otherwise because newspapers never really did it before and the public knows it. Even the dimmest bulbs understand that print subscription rates and single-copy prices are a tiny, tiny fraction of what newspaper content costs.

Besides, news-related content of all sorts has been free on the internet for more than 15 years. Newspapers in the United States who protest that free isn’t an optimum model and a pay model just makes more sense should study the U.S. implementation success of another optimum model, the metric system.

As for lawsuits in an area where technology and society have lapped existing intellectual property laws, it might be useful to contemplate that surgeons recommend surgery, internists recommend medicines and lawyers recommend lawsuits. Whether the patients or plaintiffs benefit is often uncertain, but the practitioners always do

As for newspapers still being the main local source of information, ads and news, that’s simply no longer the case. The kind of information that appeared in classified ads was once so valuable that newspapers were able to charge both for running the ad and reading it. It’s on the web now, mostly for free. Display ads are moving there.

The kind of information that appeared in “What’s Happening” columns now appears on government and private websites and e-mails, and newspapers are fighting a rear-guard action against moving legal ads there as well.

As for hard news, newspapers and other news organizations aren’t the sole source or often even the best source. Cheap computing, internet access and social network sites have turned news consumers into news providers and consumers. Look at the turmoil in Iran, where the government has shut down the so-called mainstream media, but certainly hasn’t shut down the story.

But still, the hyena pack of consultants now circling the dying newspaper herd with hungry yelps of Monetize! Monetize! may be right. Their advice amounts to telling frightened publishers that the key to success in a nation of nymphomaniacs is to open a brothel.

Oddly enough, besides advice, they also sell red light bulbs. . .

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