Newspaper News - Written by Robert Ivan on Thursday, January 8, 2009 11:52 - 0 Comments

Follow Up to Eric Schmidt’s Interview With Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky

Here is my follow up to: CEO Eric Schmidt wishes he could rescue newspapers. By Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky

Click and read the article above if you have not already, but the gist is that Google (GOOG) doesn’t have a business plan for newspapers and at this point is not interested getting involved.  At the same time, Schmidt doesn’t “think bloggers make up the difference” so it’s a problem for the citizens of this free nation, USA.

We’ve heard this before from Schmidt when Rachel Maddow interviewed him in August 2008 at the DNC.  Watch the video. He seems to be towing the company line in regards to the newspaper industry.  

Schmidt himself states that Google’s main business is advertising, so why would google, as a going enterprise, be interested in saving the newspaper industry?  Well for one, suppose that there were no news sites – they all went out of business.  Then bloggers wouldn’t have much to talk about, right?  and then Google wouldn’t make $16 billion a year from adsense.

I don’t thinks so.

ONLINE: I think bloggers, microbloggers, twitter users, facebook users, craigslist posters, vimeo and youtube users and countless millions more will find a way report on their community of interest and through it all, Google will find a way to make money monetizing these experiences.

OFFLINE: There are a multitude of communications options for those interested in news gathering and sharing from the archaic word-of-mouth to newsletters.

TAKEAWAYS: I cannot see how a for-profit failing newspaper can go not-for-profit.  The debt obligations and stakeholder obligations are too great.  Bankruptcy will give newspapers time to reorganize and create a working business model but it is not a solution in and of itself.  What I can see are new news businesses being created in the vacuum of failed traditional newspapers.  Schmidt suggests this too with his advocation of ProPublica.

Additionaly, there are newspapers and news organizations that are not failing, that will continue to serve the “public good”.  The Wall Street Journal (NewsCorp.) and The Washington Post (Kaplan PDF p.42) and The Economist (The Economist Group) and National Public Radio (NPR Foundation) being prime examples of news organizations that operate on diverse revenue streams.

Bottome line?  As the free market wishes, let failing papers fail, it is silly to assume that No One will step in to fill their absence.

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