The New Business Model for Newspaper Survival?

All over the U.S., newspapers are in deep trouble. Some have closed their doors; others are teetering toward collapse.

Their incomes from advertising and paid subscriptions are shrinking as more and more of us turn to online sources for news, sports, information, classified advertisements and updates on restaurants, movies, products and services.

Now there is urgent talk that newspapers may have to become mostly digital and try to sell their content online, to subscribers and to single-copy buyers (the digital equivalent of those who occasionally purchase newspapers from coin racks and news stands).

Selling digitized newspaper content already has failed several times. The New York Times and others previously have tried and abandoned it. Internet users are used to getting almost everything for free, except on music sites such as iTunes.

Some pundits already have floated this idea: Why not sell digitized newspaper content the same way music is sold on iTunes?

There's one big problem, however. Newspapers going digital with the iTunes model in mind will have to spend a lot of money on trying to make their reporters, feature writers and columnists into national and international media stars, so people will want to buy what they write.

Every journalist will have to become his or her own "brand"--You sell, you can keep working here.

The emphasis on "gotcha" journalism and scandal mongering then will just increase, as journalism "brands" battle each other for sales and marketplace dominance.

Nobody will want to cover local news--Boy Scout promotions, wedding announcements, obituaries, two-car accidents at Main and Elm--because almost nobody (except a few family members) will pay any money to read such reports, print them out and put them in scrapbooks.

Meanwhile, there will be hundreds, thousands of journalist "brands" rushing to cover President Obama, Kate Winslet and the Jonas Brothers.

Why, after all, write a story that will bring in two dollars when you can write one that might, potentially, bring in thousands for the newspaper and hundreds for your pocket?

If you sell, you can stay. If you don't sell, we'll replace you with a better "brand."

Doesn't sound like a very promising future for American journalism.

-- Si Dunn

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