According to a story in the Wall Street Journal, newspapers’ online revenue in 2009 hit $2.7 billion. This while newspapers’ print revenue continued to fall to about $24 billion, about half what it was in 2000. So the good news is that newspapers aren’t bleeding as much.

It may not be a financial savior, but I hope it’s enough to keep newspapers alive for awhile, if only online. I still say they are our best hope for the future because their newsgathering staff, as cut back as it is, is still superior to that of broadcast stations. Let’s face it, if you want local news, you are going to get it from a newspaper web site, not a television station.

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Isn’t the asking of this question alone a sign that you are dead in the water yourself?

I was at a meeting the other day with local media professionals and the newspaper design maven at the local paper said that “silos” didn’t exist at the paper any more and that we need to prepare college grads for the new reality.

This means that we need to prepare them for life as a mojo or at least prepare our so-called “print” majors for a career with multimedia. With flip video cameras, the iPhone, digital audio recorders, Audacity, netbooks and such, how can this question even be asked today?

According to Bob Papper, who yearly does a “Future of News” study that he presents at RTNDA, newspapers lost an estimated 5,000 or so jobs in 2009, approximately 11 percent of newsworkers. TV stations lost only about 1.5 percent.

Stories hitting my computer recently include ones about how we are re-entering the world pre-Gutenberg when words were less important than oral communication and how the Ventura (CA) newspaper is using the iPhone (and other assorted gadgets to make the iPhone functional) to record video in the field and upload it immediately to their web site.

It is clear to me that the word is in danger of losing out to the image. In fact, that’s the title of an excellent book from 1998: The Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word.

The newsroom is already converged, baby.

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Consumers are most likely to pay for movies and music (sort of expected) and least likely to pay for content that is user generated, i.e., social media sites, consumer-created movies and blogs.

IN THE MIDDLE are news and information sites, such as newspapers and magazines. The problem once again is that consumers can access a lot of news and information for free. As long as that choice is around, it is going to be very difficult to set up paywalls.

A friend of mind who is a publisher of a small daily in North Carolina told me recently that his great paywall experiment is going like this: more than 4,000 subscribers to the print editing, a little over 350 to the online version. It may seem like a small number, but it’s a start.

In the Nielsen study, consumers had a few requirements for content they would pay for. For instance, 71% said that content would have to be much better before they would consider paying.

That leaves a door open it seems to me, because quality is something we can control. This means stop the cutting of the newsroom: they are your only hope to survive. They are not an unjustifiable expense.

For the full read, go to: http://tinyurl.com/yka7vez

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The plan calls for a limited number of free reads per month for everyone, then you’ll have to pay to gain access. Subscribers to the print edition will have full access.

The key is to avoid fungibility. Too much of news is fungible, i.e., it is easily exchanged for another similar product.

AN EXAMPLE is wheat stored in a silo from a variety of farmers. The exact kernels are interchangeable — what matters is the number of bushels each farmer has stored, not which individual kernels are his.

Too much of news is fungible, i.e., it can be substituted for by others’ news quite easily, so why pay for it? The NYT, and others who will inevitably follow, needs to create content that is unique, that cannot be found by going elsewhere.

How they do that is up to staff creativity and hard work. But who better to show the way than the Times?

The Times is basing its decision largely on the success of the iTunes music and app store. What is the secret of that store’s success? It’s content isn’t fungible. It cannot be gotten elsewhere.

When readers are cornered they will pay. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

PREVIOUS POSTS: Read more about the future of newspapers.

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Somewhat surprising to me, 77% said they would be willing to pay something, 13% said no and 12% said maybe. Of the people who said yes, 44% voted for $1 a month and 33% voted for $1 a month or $5 a month.  I expected there to be more no’s.

A potential confounding factor is that the people who visit this site and probably those who voted as well, are news junkies and not typical of the every day reader.

PEOPLE WILL PAY

Still, I think it shows that people will pay for mediated news, although probably not very much, and it better be unique. One commented summed it up quite well: “[I would pay] nothing unless it was in some large way better than I can get for free.”

I think we can freely define “better” as including “unique” and  “well chosen and edited.”

It is clear that the pay-for-mediated-news (note the mediated) angle must be explored.

Earlier post on “portal” vs. “paywall.”

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