I want to pass along a good article from Daring Fireball’s own John Gruber. In Pay Walls, Gruber dissects ex-Baltimore Sun journalist and The Wire creator David Simon‘s call for newspapers to collude on a Newspaper Paywall.
I couldn’t agree with Gruber more. Pre-internet, general interest newspapers made money because they were effective advertising solutions on a cheap and convenient distribution platform, not because they won Pulitzer Prizes. As soon as internet access became ubiquitous, newspapers didn’t look so cheap and convenient.
Newspapers need to adapt to the new information paradigm by exploring NEW revenue streams. The Washington Post or NY Times should have bought Avenue A/ Razorfish a long ago. There is the future. There is the new advertising solution. There is the new revenue.
Can you imagine NYT and WPO and Gannett and Advance and MNI each offering this type of advertising solution to their new and existing advertisers? Cox Ohio publishers, via their AD Studio, are the only ones I know that do it, and they consider it their most important revenue stream going forward.
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OH… just google “newspaper paywall”
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