$20 per month? That's an absurd price for news from one provider. Spotify gives you unlimited music from just about every label for half that price.

I would consider paying something like that for news if I got all the content from all providers aggregated by some distribution service for that sum.

I pay $99 per year for the WSJ online. It's worth every penny, but its partly for professional reasons.

But anyways, I know the Wall Street Journal, The Wall Street Journal is [practically] a friend of mine. Newsday, you're no Wall Street Journal.

Davidoff really is great.

That's all I've got.

It is free for any print subscribers or IO cable customers. I stopped going when they went to the stupid flash design.

It is free for any print subscribers or IO cable customers. I stopped going when they went to the stupid flash design.

I want to know who's running the online team on these newspapers. If you factor in a $1 for the Sunday edition, this monthly fee is about $4 more than getting the print edition. And they forgot that they're still Newsday. I have zero interest in the goings-on of Nassau County so the only thing going for it is the sports section. I can't believe they'd back themselves into this corner. Are they actively trying to dissuade people from going online?

I stopped going when they went to the stupid flash design

I stopped going when they went to the stupid flash design

& started with all the stupid double posts.

Neil Best's take...

Here is a story about this monumental step in the history of Newsday in particular and the newspaper industry in general.

The story quotes a media consultant named John Morton, who said the current system of free online content is not a "rational model."

That, my friends, is indisputable.

"Despite the false premise that has been floating around for the last 19 years, that information on the Internet wants to be free, [it] is just not true," Morton said. "People have always been willing to pay for information they have felt was useful to them."

I am not invited to meetings of Newsday/Cablevision executives, but I assume part of the strategy here is not solely about generating revenue from Newsday.com but also about giving people in Cablevision's territory one more reason to stick with or switch to the company's services over those of its competitors.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Charging non-print and IO subscribers $5 a week is stupid but understandable: you have the right to offer services in the free market. The vile part will come in a few months when the members of the dying industry start getting taxpayer handouts because "it is necessary to a blowhard like Wally Matthews employed".

This is a good idea for newspapers and magazines, although I'm not convinced that this particular pricing structure works. However, in my experience most people actually underestimate the cost of doing business in publishing.

Frankly, why should writers and publishers who can command a price give their stuff away for free? People should get a fair price for their time, unless they don't want to.

I will not rest until Bill Madden is sleepwalking the streets!

There, I said it!

The story quotes a media consultant named John Morton, who said the current system of free online content a disparate set of content bundled into the same package for each and every customer is not a "rational model."

Fixed.

As Clay Shirky has pointed out so well. Newspapers were a monopoly destroyed by the internet.

There is now no reason a single company to provide me with all of my sports, business, restaurant reviews, travel advice, local news, international news, opinion, and comics. It is a historical artifact.

What I think the NY Times or any other paper should have done was

1) spin off all of their various departments as separate companies.
2) create N-year agreements where each department will share some resources like HR, benefit plan, perhaps office space, maybe web development, etc. for some set amount of time. Let N be 3-5.
3) The newspaper company then agrees to purchase a license for the content provided by its former departments to stock its newspaper.
4) The newspaper in a sense drops its role as the producer of content, but instead becomes an aggregator and distributor of content.
5) The spun off departments are now free to innovate dramatically. The former NYTimes sports department may decide to cover all sports from Boston to D.C. with an emphasis on just the four majors. The style section could try to become a worldwide leader in the coverage of fashion or theatre, etc.

You are obviously going to get a lot of layoffs from this model as there may only be two or three competing outlets covering NY Sports, rather than 8 papers or some such, but it seems to be that this is a much more natural model for how these companies should be organized (says the man whose company does nothing but sports statistics).

Frankly, why should writers and publishers who can command a price give their stuff away for free? People should get a fair price for their time, unless they don't want to.

Obviously they should command a price, but they won't be able to. I'll be stunned if they manage more than 500 subscribers who are paying full freight.

Sean - there's some notes for you on that other thread that's now off the sidebar re: the NL, just wanted to make sure you took a look.

Obviously they should command a price, but they won't be able to.

Right. Which is why the Internet is actually a graveyard for most mass-market print content, unless you can sustain the investment in Internet publishing almost completely from sales of the print edition. Or, you are in a position where by aggregating content you render yourself invaluable.

If I were running a newspaper, I'd close down my Internet site, except as a sort of headline aggregator placeholder for the URL. It's me competing against myself.

If I were running a newspaper,

I'd sell.

If I were running a newspaper, I'd close down my Internet site, except as a sort of headline aggregator placeholder for the URL. It's me competing against myself.

I moved to the part of the greater Hartford area that gets a suburban afternoon daily. For the first time in years, I get the paper daily. I like it, but I'm apparently 40 years behind the times. In any case, they require a subscription if you want to read them online. A friend bseligs them, but reading it on a printed page exposes me to stories I wouldn't read if I had to click on a link. This probably consigns me to some circle of Primer Hell, but I'm already down there for my doubts on DIPs, long story-arc TV, and indie rock.

I used to be against long story-arc TV until I got a DVR. Keeping up with those shows was basically impossible before I got one.

This probably consigns me to some circle of Primer Hell, but I'm already down there for my doubtis on DIPs.

You and me both. Same town, same paper, same rationale.

I've said this on pretty much every newspaper thread that comes up, but the Newsday model works most effectively if they are delivering something people want but can't get anywhere else. In NYC that might not be possible. GGC's local paper (and mine) works well because nobody else is covering our town's news - at least not without plagiarizing it from that paper. They are using the Newsday model effectively because they're a local news monopoly.

GGC's local paper (and mine) works well because nobody else is covering our town's news

Not another cat/tree incident on Murphy Road!

This move by Newsday has nothing to do with the challenges facing print media in the 21st century.

Cablevision owns Newsday. Cablevision, for now, also owns the Knicks and Rangers, but they will be spinning off that portion of the business. Cablevision's core assets are tied to television and cable: Rainbow Media Holdings, digital cable service, providing Internet service, and VOIP. This move is about using Newsday as another value-added component to Cablevision's range of core offerings. Why? Because Verizon FIOS is steadily chipping away at their customer base.

Oh, and it only took me about 1 minute to scale the Newsday pay wall.

In NYC that might not be possible. GGC's local paper (and mine) works well because nobody else is covering our town's news - at least not without plagiarizing it from that paper.

I wonder if this will start changing soon, too. There's a "hyperlocal" network of tumblr accounts called Neighborhoodr that allows readers to link to or post local news for their neighborhoods in New York. So far it's mostly pictures and links, but I wonder if independent bloggers will start collaborating to cover news in their areas on sites like that one.

This is a unique situation. Cablevision has a business model here taht few other newspapers in the country could use. They don't expect a significant number of people to subscribe to the web site. The purpose of the economic model they are pursuing is to keep their customers from switching to Fios and get some Long Island FIOS customers to switch back. Plus, presumably, they'll keep more print subscribers than they would have with a free web site. And unlike what would happen to most web sites if they tried this, they won't lose a significant amount of revenue because most of the site's readers who advertisers want to reach through the site - Nassau/Suffolk residents - will still have free access to the website. And now that all the other NYC papers have more or less given up on covering Long Island because of cutbacks, Newsday has virtually zero competition in covering Nassau/Suffolk news - LI has one tv station with an evening newscast, and that's it.

It's a model I think could work for them. But I don't know if there are any other papers in the country that have similar enough circumstances to even bother trying a similar model.

(N)obody else is covering our town's news - at least not without plagiarizing it from that paper.

The Hartford Courant would do no such thing ;)!

I wonder if independent bloggers will start collaborating to cover news in their areas on sites like that one.

At which point they'll discover how expensive and time-consuming it is to be a journalist. Which is partly why we have newspapers and magazines.

When it comes to the print media, I'm probably with GGC in Primer H--l. Newspapers have survived, after a fashion, the radio and television revolutions. They'll do the same with the Internet and cellphones.

I wonder if this will start changing soon, too. There's a "hyperlocal" network of tumblr accounts called Neighborhoodr that allows readers to link to or post local news for their neighborhoods in New York. So far it's mostly pictures and links, but I wonder if independent bloggers will start collaborating to cover news in their areas on sites like that one.

Could one go to their PD every morning and get access to their log and start a police beat blog? or do they have to get accredited or something?

Could one go to their PD every morning and get access to their log and start a police beat blog? or do they have to get accredited or something?

Good question. I assume that is technically public info, right? Either way, I imagine you could do a pretty decent job of it with a police scanner and some elbow grease alone.

Not really, The fuzz around here either encrypt their coms or frequency hop.

Good question. I assume that is technically public info, right? Either way, I imagine you could do a pretty decent job of it with a police scanner and some elbow grease alone.

If the press has access to information, then everyone else does to. But, the ordinary citizen would likely deal with a lot of hassles from folks who aren't aware they have equal access to such information, at least for a while. And, presumably, the police beat reporter has developed contacts who can provide info/tips that isn't in the reports.

The bigger issue, as fra paolo notes, is that in most cases it's too damn time-consuming for someone to launch this effort on his own.