Newspapers

Nearly two-thirds of respondents to a weeklong Mediabistro poll on paywalls predicted that charging for online content would spell doom for newspapers. Another 20% said paywalls wouldn't make a meaningful difference.

In other words, 85% of the 1,682 participants apparently think News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch's belligerent vow to charge for online content starting next year is tantamount to publisher-assisted suicide.

Of course, Murdoch isn't the only publisher considering a paywall -- just the loudest. Newsday recently began charging non-print subscribers, and the New York Times also is mulling over a fee-based online subscription.

The specific question we asked was, "Do you think paywalls will save newspapers?" Here are the specific options offered and what percentage of the vote each got:

65% -- No, in fact it'll be the beginning of the end as readers flee to other free sources.

20% -- No, it'll generate some revenue but won't make a meaningful difference.

12% -- Yes, making readers pay will generate the revenue newspapers need to stay afloat.

3% -- Other

No, I have no idea what "other" could be either. The crowd can be an enigma that way.

This should work out well.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is threatening to block Google entirely from accessing articles on News Corp. web sites. Murdoch earlier this year launched a verbal jihad against Internet aggregators and search engines and has vowed to start making people pay for content.

From guardian.co.uk:

In an interview with Sky News Australia, the mogul said that newspapers in his media empire - including the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal - would consider blocking Google entirely once they had enacted plans to charge people for reading their stories on the web.

In recent months, Murdoch his lieutenants have stepped up their war of words with Google, accusing it of "kleptomania" and acting as a "parasite" for including News Corp content in its Google News pages. But asked why News Corp executives had not chosen to simply remove their websites entirely from Google's search indexes - a simple technical operation – Murdoch said just such a move was on the cards.

"I think we will, but that's when we start charging," he said.

Boy, that'll really show Google! Murdoch continues:

"We have it already with the Wall Street Journal. We have a wall, but it's not right to the ceiling. You can get, usually, the first paragraph from any story - but if you're not a paying subscriber to WSJ.com all you get is a paragraph and a subscription form."

The thing is, when you're trying to craft a viable revenue model for your beleaguered online properties, it helps to have a basic understanding of the Internets. As guardian.co.uk's Bobbie Johnson points out, what Murdoch says isn't entirely true. In fact, it's not true at all. Users who find WSJ content through Google can read an entire article; only the people who access the content via wsj.com get a measly paragraph or two, along with the subscription solicitation.

Don't believe me? Here's the proof:

With Feds, BofA's Lewis Met His Match (wsj.com version)

Now I just take that headline and type it into Google News...

With Feds, BofA's Lewis Met His Match (Google version)

...click on the top return, and voila: The entire article, at your service.

Look, the entire publishing industry is grappling with how to craft a winning business model. It's not easy. But "the world's most powerful media owner," as Sky News Australia interview David Speers calls Murdoch (video below), clearly is letting his frustration cloud his judgment. What he's saying is nonsense. Blocking Google and other search engines is tantamount to online publishing suicide. Does he really think that subscription revenue will more than make up for the ad revenue he'll lose when page views plunge? I don't know what News Corp.'s traffic data says, but plenty of sites out there get half their PVs or more from Google.

Rupert, never mind all this talk of pay walls and banning Google. The solution to your problem is clear: More Page 3 girls!

(Also see Google CEO On Murdoch's Online Pay Plan: It's Crazy Talk)

This isn't your grandfather's way of reading the paper: The Newspaper Association of America, citing a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online, said newspaper Websites attracted an average of more than 74 million monthly unique visitors during the third quarter of 2009, representing 38% of all Internet users.

The NAA added that those visitors spent 2.7 billion minutes browsing the sites during more than 596 million total sessions.

NAA president and CEO John F. Sturm said:

Newspaper publishers continue to aggressively reinvent their business models, leveraging trusted brands to attract a growing and sophisticated audience in the digital space. At the same time, industry executives have adopted smarter circulation strategies that are growing circulation revenues even though paid circulation numbers are lower. This places the focus where it belongs: Retaining core readers who deliver maximum value to advertisers while harnessing digital platforms to broaden our medium's audience and position us strongly for the future.

Advertising Age's "Media Guy" columnist Simon Dumenco has some interesting advice for journalists desperate to stay in (or get into) the business as the media economy continues its meldown: Follow the hate.

Citing a recent column by Missouri School of Journalism assistant professor Charles Davis in which he argues that "major news organizations need to cover hate the way they once did -- as a stand-alone beat," Dumenco laments that the J-school professor's suggestion essentially was ignored and writes:

The truly poignant thing about Davis' earnest proposal is that everything is a hate beat these days, because everybody is consumed with hating on everybody else. Creating hate beats would be the ultimate redundancy.

True enough, especially when there's an entire news network exclusively devoted to hating.

Undaunted, Dumenco helpfully suggests that journalism students and practicing reporters might find opportunities by carving out their own hate specialties. After all, why buck a trend?

Financial Times editor Lionel Barber is still a believer that people will pay for Web content.

Speaking at a Media Standards Trust event at the British Academy Thursday night, as reported by paidContent:UK, Barber said:

How these online payment models work and how much revenue they can generate is still up in the air. But I confidently predict that within the next 12 months, almost all news organizations will be charging for content.

If they feel it's distinctive enough…you've got to be different. It's the people in the mediocre middle that are going to be the meat in the sandwich.

FT publisher Rob Grimsaw told paidContent:UK in May that the site totaled 1.3 million non-paying registrants and 110,000 paying subscribers, and the company's publishing business was two-thirds digital.

USAToday.com debuted a page called News Deck, which compiles the site's top stories in eight categories: News, Travel, Money, Sports, Life, Tech, Weather and Offbeat, TechCrunch reported.

Users can scroll down in each category for more headlines, and they have the option to choose between the site's top stories and most popular stories.

USA Today told TechCrunch it aims to test products like this on the Web to determine what users need from a news site in terms of finding headlines and top stories.

The presses have been stopped on The Printed Blog, which sought to reverse the trend of print copy migrating to the Internet, instead acquiring content from bloggers and actually printing it in local newspapers.

According to the announcement from publisher Joshua Karp, the company is ceasing operations due to a lack of outside investment capital, but the idea was far from a complete failure.

Karp's idea, as described by Editor & Publisher, "was to get content from local bloggers with their permission and, eventually, some kind of payment. The content was put in a highly templated format that, Karp ultimately hoped, could change not just by city but by neighborhood. The highly targeted paper, distributed by hand at mass-transit stops, was supposed to be cheap to produce for low ad rates that ultimately would sustain the paper."

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Johnston Press, publisher of The Scotsman and other Edinburgh newspapers, banned access to Facebook, paidContent:UK reported, saying in a memo that more than one-half of its outbound Web traffic went to the social-networking site. But if more than one-half of traffic goes to a single site, shouldn't that highlight its importance?

Several newspapers reversed earlier decisions to cut off Facebook access, as the site has become a valuable tool for reporters. And JP publications even use the social-networking site to send out messages, going so far as to create local pages.

"Will whoever is responsible for this have to get departmental consent every time they update those pages?" paidContent:UK asks.

Greenspun Interactive president and executive editor Rob Curley spoke with mediabistro.com Daily Media Newsfeed editor David Hirschman about his current role at the online arm of the company that owns the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Weekly newspapers, his start in the media business and 702.TV, which he described as "a video program that's kind of reverse-engineered from the Web."

Some highlights from the conversation between Curley and Hirschman follow.

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Admitting that you were beaten on a story is one thing, but going out of your way to salute your "rival" is a nice touch. The Los Angeles Times published a story Friday not only giving TMZ credit for being the first to report Michael Jackson's death, but also poking fun at news channels, including TMZ corporate cousin CNN, for refusing to confirm the story until it was reported by a more "reputable" source, such as, the Los Angeles Times.

"With the death of pop star Michael Jackson, TMZ gave the most potent demonstration yet of its ability to stir the pot of entertainment news," the Times wrote. "The gossip site once again left TV networks and other traditional media outlets scrambling in its wake, even as they attempted to distance themselves from a source widely regarded as salacious, if not disreputable."

CNN and TMZ are both owned by Time Warner.

TMZ managing editor Harvey Levin told the Times, "No matter what they say, people know we broke the story. That's how competitors handle it. There's no issue about our credibility."