A Recipe for Newspaper Survival in the Internet Age

A pretty interesting discussion on Slashdot about the future of my industry.

Poynter had a similar piece a few days ago.

I've been saying this for a few months now, but the problem isn't journalism, blogs or the Web. It's newspapers' inability to adapt its advertising model to the Web.

They've been too worried about how to get people to pay for the product rather than looking at how to capitalize on readers' migration to the Web. Google and Yahoo don't charge subscription fees for their basic services and still manage to make a bundle. Why can't newspapers?

The Poynter piece has two suggestions (among several) that I think are particularly on-point:

- Install Web analytics and ad-management systems that enable advertising managers to identify clusters of content (or clusters of users) that can attract the highest possible prices on a CPM basis.

- Hire people who can sell online advertising effectively -- as a separate buy, rather than bundled with print ads.