There’s plenty of buzz in the blogosphere about an under-the-radar meeting that took place last week between top newspaper executives to discuss issues of common concern, including the possibility of charging for online access to news.  Speculation centers upon whether the participants, which included McClatchy’s Gary Pruitt, Dallas Morning News Publisher Jim Moroney, Lee Enterprises’ Mary Junck and E.W. Scripps Mark Contreras, allowed the discussion to stray into the terms under which their organizations could erect pay walls in front of content.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) says price was never discussed during the meeting, and that’s good, since federal antitrust laws are pretty specific about such things.  There’s no law against competitors discussing common issues, but setting prices is a no-no.

Conventional wisdom says that newspaper price-fixing would be dead on arrival, but some people argue that the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly set a precedent under which an aggregator representing multiple properties could get away with charging fees for access. Slate’s Jack Shafer weighs the possibilities and concludes that collusion would be an exceedingly risky move under an administration that has promised to be tough on businesses.

Pat Thornton sees the devil in the details. People aren’t going to pay for to read the police blotter and it’s going to be even tougher to sell them on having to buy services that used to be free, he says. “You can’t charge for something that has been free for years without drastically improving it,” argues Thornton. Given that news organizations have been cutting resources left and right, it’s pretty difficult to argue that the product is getting any better.

There actually is precedent for Web publishers charging for services that were once free.  In the heady days of the dot-com bubble, nearly everything was gratis on the web.  After market realities forced businesses to create sustainable models, photo- and video-sharing sites that were once free began to charge membership fees.  Some businesses and specialty publishers also began linking Web access to paid print subscriptions, a model that persists to this day at publications like Advertising Age.

Perception of Value

Thornton has got it right that perceived value is the crux of the issue.  Consumers understand that technology isn’t free and accept that publishers must charge for niceties like unlimited storage.  They also appreciate that unique, unduplicated services are worth a subscription fee if the information is vital to their job or avocation.

We personally like the model of Geocaching.com, the website that serves the addictions of millions of avid gamers who search for treasures stashed in outdoor locations around the world.  A basic subscription to the site is free, but services that significantly enhance the pleasure of playing the game demand a $30 annual subscription.

Geocaching.com enjoys the advantage of being a near-monopoly in its market.  There’s nothing wrong with that, though.  The publisher has succeeded in providing a comprehensive database of information that its constituents can’t get anywhere else.

We continue to believe it’s highly unlikely that publishers will succeed in establishing an industry-wide paid content model.  Anyone who fails to join the consortium could potentially disrupt the whole deal, and too many alternative sources of free information already exist.  CNN, for example, will never join such a group.  Instead, it will benefit from the vast traffic that will stream to its website when the pay walls go up.

Individual publishers may succeed in charging for content, but they’ll do it with content that serves a vital interest or need in their communities.  There are plenty of possibilities, but they will be exploited by innovative people at the local level, not mandated from the top by a few executives who are motivated more by self-preservation than serving the interests of their audience.

It appears that some leading news titles are finally throwing in the towel on the circulation wars.  The New York Times just announced that it will hike its single copy price to $2 on June 1, a 33% increase. Outside of the New York area, the Sunday Times will now cost a whopping seven dollars for home delivery. Several other papers have also increased prices recently, including the Washington Post, Tampa Tribune and Dallas Morning News.  These papers have effectively doubled their newsstand prices in the last two years.  Newsweek just rolled out a new design and cut its circulation by half while increasing cover prices.

What’s going on?  We suspect the publishers are finally beginning a sunsetting strategy for their print editions.  By driving up circulation prices, they are effectively winnowing out their low-value customers.  Price increases will probably come fast and furious in the future. Each will cause circulation to fall until a new floor is reached. Expect circulation declines to quicken as more newspapers adopt the strategy.  Declines have been running in the 6% to 8% range per year for the last two years, but will probably increase if more papers follow the lead of the Times and Journal.

In effect, these newspapers are giving up on print. They are harvesting their most loyal readers and shifting their investments to new platforms.  With the average age of a daily newspaper reader now standing at over 55 years, publishers can expect to derive print circulation revenue for about another decade. Of course, it may not be economically viable to stick with a daily schedule that long, but that readership can be milked for some time to come.

The harvesting strategy makes sense economically, strategically and environmentally. It’s pointless to throw good money after bad chasing new readers with deeply discounted subscriptions that are canceled after three months.  Loyal readers are more attractive to advertisers than bulk circulation and can command higher CPMs. And this means fewer papers going in landfills.  Treating print as a cash cow enables publishers to plow whatever profits are left into new platforms.  Their companies will grow smaller over time, but at least they’re more likely to have a future.

Miscellany

Dan Froomkin begins a four-part series at Nieman Journalism Lab on a prescription for the news industry.  He argues that the bland, expressionless voice that journalism organizations have adopted for the past 40 years has undermined their appeal. “We stifle some of our best stories with a wet blanket of pseudo-neutrality. We edit out tone. We banish anything smacking of activism. We don’t telegraph our own enthusiasm for what it is we’re doing.” In part two, he argues for putting passion back in news reporting.

The Wall Street Journal is running an interactive map that shows “adverse events at the top 100 newspapers” since 2006.  You can mouse over the regions and see information on layoffs, circulation trends and business conditions.  It ‘s accompanied by a dense, ugly chart with detailed information and lots of unexplained columns.  It also doesn’t include recent information like the closure of the Tucson Citizen.

San Diego Valley Reader has an extensive profile of Tewfiq (Tom) Gores, the billionaire who runs Platinum Equity, the partnership that bought the San Diego Union-Tribune. The piece details the controversial background of Gores’ uncle, Tom Joubran, an Arab immigrant who prospered as a grocer in Flint, Michigan but whose background may involve some criminal activity.  It suggests that the Union-Tribune may adopt a strong pro-Palestinian editorial position, which would be quite a contrast from its traditional Republican leanings.

USA Today has a cover story in its money section today that was reported entirely on Twitter. Reporter Del Jones asked CEOs to comment on whether the country is drifting toward a European style of capitalism.  Their responses are reproduced in the staccato shorthand that Twitter’s 140 character limitation imposes.  Absent from the discussion are the founders of Twitter – Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone – who failed to respond to numerous tweeted requests.  Of course, with more than 2 million followers between them, they’re probably busy.

Is Twitter a blessing or a curse for newsrooms?  Editors are struggling with that issue in light of a recent episode in which a New York Times reporter tweeted news of the company’s discussions with Google from a supposedly confidential meeting. The Times raised eyebrows yesterday by appointing Jennifer Preston, the former editor of its regional sections, as the paper’s first social media editor.  The job involves coordinating the newsroom’s use of social media, but it can also be seen as an effort to rein in reporters from sharing news before it’s been fully baked. Similar positions have recently been created by BusinessWeek, the Los Angeles Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Journalism professor Edward Wasserman tells how Matt Drudge supposedly broke the story of President Clinton’s affair with a White House intern more than a decade ago.  In fact, Drudge didn’t break the story but rather related the fact that Newsweek was sitting on it.  The information had been leaked to Drudge by a disgruntled Newsweek staffer, making it possibly the first example of reporters using social media channels to take publishing into their own hands.

Wasserman says the real risk of Twitter is that it will incline journalists to spend more time in front of their computer screens and less time pounding their beats.  What the issue really comes down to is control.  Editors are struggling with the conflicting priorities.  On the one hand, they understand that tools like Twitter help satisfy readers’ needs for immediacy and transparency.  On the other, they have trouble accepting the idea that reporters can now take their stories directly to the public without an editor’s approval. The Wall Street Journal recently issued guidelines for appropriate uses of social media by its staff, including the requirement that reporters gain approval before “friending” confidential sources.

The Times says that Preston won’t be a Twitter cop, but the coordinating function can involve shutting down social media just as easily as enabling it.  In the end, editors will lose this battle.  Media organizations have to get used to the idea of writing their first draft of history without level of fact-checking and oversight to which they are accustomed. That’s because if they don’t do it, somebody else will.  This isn’t a comfortable idea, or even a good one, but it’s where the media world is headed.

Time-Spent-Reading Numbers Baffle

The latest Nielsen online reports about the amount of time people spend on newspaper websites has been released, and again the results are all over the map.  A sampling of the monthly time-spent-reading figures comparing April 2008 to April 2009 (percentages approximate):

• Wall Street Journal down 40%
• Chicago Tribune up 20%
• San Francisco Chronicle up 35%
• Atlanta Journal Constitution up 90%
• Seattle Times down 60%

And on and on.

Editor & Publisher tries to sort all this out.  It talks to the assistant managing editor for digital at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, whose readers spend an average of 40 minutes per month on the site. Terry Sauer tells E & P that the high numbers may be due to the placement of homepage links on individual articles, but he admits it lots of other papers do this as well.

Maybe the real issue is that time-spent-reading is a poor indicator of affinity.  With more and more people using tabbed browsers, it’s possible to leave a webpage open for hours without looking at it.  Also, heavy spikes of traffic prompted by local news events may actually drive down time-spent numbers because visitors come and leave so quickly.  Finally, a one-month snapshot in time is virtually meaningless.  Nielsen would do better to measure affinity in increments of at least six months.

Pressmen Feel the Pain

Newspaper cutbacks are falling apart on the shoulders of pressmen, the true ink-stained wretches of the industry.  Some big papers have cut back their pressroom staffs by 50% or more. Last year, the Boston Herald outsourced its print operations and cut 130 production jobs. The Boston Globe then said it would close its Billerica plant and lay off as many as 200 employees. The pressroom that printed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and still print the Seattle Times has been whittled back from 62 to 27 employees.

Against that backdrop, unions representing mailers and printers at the Globe this morning agreed to concessions with the New York Times Company that chop more than $7 million in salaries and benefits.  The pressmen’s meeting was described as “angry.” Unions representing editorial staff and drivers are scheduled to vote on concessions next month.

The Joy of Bankruptcy

Editor & Publisher has an excellent piece on the wonders and dangers of bankruptcy.  The story is timely because many newspaper companies must face the music this year.  Some people think the newspaper business is losing money, but that’s actually not true.  Most major dailies still make an operating profit but their ownership is burdened with crushing debt acquired during the ill-conceived consolidation binge of a few years ago.

On the plus side, bankruptcy is a way to freeze debt payments, cancel long-term contracts and renegotiate debt, often to much lower levels.  The negatives: Less flexibility to invest in anything beyond keeping the lights on, difficulty finding suppliers and the possibility that a judge could decide that the company isn’t worth saving.

That last item is the most ominous one for the industry.  E & P notes that judges will permit a company to exit bankruptcy only if they believe that the company has a reasonable chance of surviving.  If the judge doesn’t buy that prospect, he or she can simply shut down the operation.  That hasn’t happened yet, but with organizations like Tribune Co., Sun-Times Media Group, Journal Register Co., Philadelphia Media Holdings and the Minneapolis Star Tribune already in bankruptcy and several other companies facing the prospect, the picture could take shape quickly.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Friday slashed its rating on McClatchy Co. deep into junk-bond territory after the company offered to buy back $1.15 billion in debt at just 20 cents on the dollar. McClatchy is now rated a CC borrower, which is just three steps away from a default rating.

Miscellany

Jim Hopkins, who started Gannett Blog nearly two years ago, will put it in hibernation at the end of September. Hopkins says he never intended to publish the blog longer than two or three years to begin with and that his decision was hastened by the increasingly negative tone of the roughly 4,000 comments he receives each month.  The news will no doubt come as a huge relief to Gannett executives, since the blog had become a major soapbox for disgruntled employees.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch moved circulation functions to two other newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises, cutting 39 jobs in the process.

The Huntington, W.Va. Herald-Dispatch cut 15% of its workforce, or 24 positions.

Talking Points Memo, the Web startup that has drawn attention as a possible model for new journalism, unveiled a new design that looks a lot more like a newspaper. Alexander Shaw talks about the thinking behind the new look, which moves more news “above the fold.”

And Finally…

British workers in the media, publishing and entertainment industries are the heaviest drinkers, according to the Department of Health. A survey of 1,400 people by YouGov found that media people consume an average of 44 units (presumably, 1.5-ounce drinks) a week, or almost twice the recommended maximum. The finance, insurance and real estate sectors came in second at 29 units per week.

Two new entries in the almost-but-on-second-thought-no front: Google considered buying a newspaper but decided against it. Eric Schmidt tells the Financial Times that “There is a line and we’re going to stay on our side of it.  We have done well by letting content people creating great content in their own way.” He also says Google has no interest in buying The New York Times, but says David Geffen would make a great owner.”

Schmidt, whose company is often reviled as the great Satan by newspaper publishers, says that the loss of smaller papers come in particular is a tragedy. “The reporting that keeps the mayor honest is going to be gone and I don’t know what to do about that,” he says.

Without explicitly stating that newspapers should become nonprofits, Schmidt implies that the model has appeal. “Newsgathering and profitability model has always been an uncomfortable relationship,” he says. But he dismisses the idea that nonprofit is a panacea. “I don’t know how to solve the problem taking for-profit structures and transitioning them to a nonprofit world without some very generous person between,” he says. But that’s not going to be Google.

There’s a 10-minute video at the link above. If you think Schmidt is some kind of business velociraptor, watch the vid.  He has a Ph.D. in engineering, is thoughtful and contemplative and is also flat-out brilliant.

Also in the might-have-been category, the Washington Post‘s two managing editors told visitors to an online chat last night that the Post considered expanding its distribution base into Baltimore, where the Sun is hemorrhaging, but decided against it. “The best and most cost effective way to get us in Baltimore is either online or through a Kindle subscription,” they wrote as one. “We have indeed evaluated whether it makes economic sense for us to sell subscriptions in the Baltimore area and determined that the math doesn’t work in our favor.”

Miscellany

That’s all she wrote for the Tucson Citizen. A last-ditch attempt attempt by the Arizona attorney general to save the newspaper failed when U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins said the AG had failed to show that violations of antitrust laws or of the Newspaper Preservation Act had occurred. Quoting verbatim: “While regrettable that the Citizen‘s illustrious legacy must come to end, it can not be said at this time, the decision to close the Citizen involves an anti-trust violation. The Court can not say at this point in time that there is a violation of the Newspaper Preservation Act,” wrote the judge, who definitely should hire one of the Citizen‘s laid-off copy editors.

The Federal Trade Commission will hold a series of workshops entitled “Can News Media Survive the Internet Age? Competition, Consumer Protection, and First Amendment Perspectives” beginning on September 15. From the release: “The workshops will consider a wide range of issues, including possible business and non-profit models for news organizations, the role of targeted behavioral and other online advertising, whether additional, limited antitrust exemptions may be necessary under these unique circumstances, and the implications of online news for both copyright protection and the availability of broadband access.”

The Associated Press is offering a novel buyout program: employees get $500 for every year of service but their pension benefits are increased to 14% to 16% above that which they would normally receive. The plan is clearly aimed at older employees. Applicants must be at least 55 years of age with at least 10 years of AP service and the combination must add up to 75.

Latest layoffs totals, from Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts blog:
Salt Lake Tribune: 3
Raleigh News & Observer: 31
Durham, N.C. Herald-Sun: 7
Detroit Newspaper Partnership: 150
Baton Rouge Advocate: 49
Honolulu Advertiser: 15

And Finally…

From the Columbia Journalism Review: “Stephen Colbert weighed in on future of journalism right now, taking a side in the debate over the role of print: ‘Newspapers are an important part of our lives, not to read, of course, but, when you’re moving you can’t wrap your dishes in a blog.'”

David Geffen

Will The New York Times Co. go under?  Don’t bet on it, says Fortune magazine.  Sure, the Times has significant business challenges, and it’s actively looking for ideas to rescue its business, but there is no shortage of investor interest in the Old Gray Lady. Hollywood mogul David Geffen reportedly made an unsuccessful play to buy the 19% stake in the Times held by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners recently, Fortune says. Google also seriously considered investing in the Times before deciding against the move.  Meanwhile, the controlling Sulzberger family publicly says they’re not interested in selling.

The Times has a lot of problems on the business end, but its brand equity is the envy of the industry.  The problem is, at current run rates, the company will be insolvent in two years.  Rather than going under, it’s more likely that the Times will be picked up by one or more wealthy investors who are already knocking at the door or will radically change its business model.

Newsweek reports that Geffen’s overture was made with the intention of converting the Times to a nonprofit institution under a structure similar to that created by the late Nelson Poynter, whose nonprofit Poynter Institute runs the St. Petersburg Times.  That paper has suffered along with everyone else, but its nonprofit status gives it some wiggle room to absorb losses, and it’s increasingly attracting attention for the quality of its work, including two Pulitzer prizes last month.

Inside the Times, there’s a working group studying the options for radical transformation.  If all options are indeed on the table, then the Times could be looking at a much smaller and more focused editorial model. Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer got some attention last month by suggesting that the Times could get by with a staff of as few as 60 reporters by cutting back on nonessential coverage and partnering for the rest.  That idea isn’t likely to be popular at a paper known for its vast resources, but the Times could set a standard for the industry by reshaping its self around a partnership model.

Baltimore Sun: Retooling or Shutting Down?

The Politico writes of the “Dark Day at Baltimore Sun“ in a piece that reads like an epitaph. The Sun‘s newsroom staff has been cut back from a high of 420 people to just 140. The paper recently closed its bureau covering Annapolis, the state capitol. Two columnists recently sent to cover an Orioles game were laid off before the ninth inning. Coverage of Washington has been outsourced to pool reporters from parent Tribune Co.

Executives say it’s all part of the process of retooling the Sun into an Internet-ready machine. “”If you’re looking to transform yourself, you really better stop looking at yourself as a newspaper company rather than as a digital media company,” says Monty Cook, the paper’s new editor. He said the Sun continues to devote itself to “watchdog journalism,” but admits that “the days of the six-part series are gone.” That’s probably true. The investigative team at the paper, which once numbered four reporters, is down to one person.

Editors See Brighter Future

The Associated Press Managing Editors survey finds a wellspring of optimism about the likelihood that newspapers will return to profitability. Just 17% of the editors surveyed said they believed the industry would go extinct while 60% said they’ll be profitable again. However, respondents overwhelmingly said they are having a harder time delivering quality information to their readers, which is not surprising giving the nearly 20,000 job cuts in the industry over the last 18 months.

Editors continue to be caught in a cost-cutting cycle that limits their ability to think outside the box. Fifty-seven percent said they didn’t have enough money to innovate and 31% said their people don’t have the skills to change with the times. Nearly 40% said they are devoting more space to “hyper-local” news, which is surprisingly low given the trends in reader news consumption. Nearly three in four said they’re sticking it out because they believe in “the mission of journalism.”

Most chilling quote: “”Our newspaper’s biggest revenue source today is foreclosure notices,” said Clifford Buchan, editor of the Minnesota-based weekly Forest Lake Times.

Miscellany

Investor John W. Rogers Jr. says it’s time to buy Gannett Co. Yes, media stocks are beaten down, says Rogers, who’s chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Ariel Investments, but “when a company with strong franchises like Gannett sells for one times trailing earnings and three times expected 2010 earnings, I step up and swing.” Rogers says newspaper companies are highly vulnerable to trends in cyclical markets like automobiles and real estate.  Once those sectors recover, though, growth should return.

It isn’t over yet for the Tucson Citizen.  A federal judge is expected to rule today on whether the Citizen, which formally closed down on Saturday, must resume publication. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard argued that Gannett Co. and Lee Enterprises violated antitrust laws by closing down the weaker of the two players in a joint operating agreement between the Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star in order to wring more money out of the surviving property.  A core shutdown staff of eight people remains at the Citizen, and it’s unclear how many staffers could be recalled to restart the paper if the judge so orders.

The Ann Arbor News will publish its last issue on July 23.  The paper announced plans to shut down back in March, but we didn’t know a precise date until now. An online version will continue to pump out news 24X7.

At least 14 news ombudsmen have lost their jobs in the past year, writes Andrew Alexander, who holds that title at the Washington Post.  Among the reasons: ombudsmen are considered less essential to the editorial function than reporters and a new crop of bloggers is now filling some of the watchdog role.  However, ombudsmen may be more important than ever, Alexander writes, noting that he is on track to receive more than 50,000 reader messages this year. “They want an informed judgment from a professional journalist who has been empowered by management to directly confront reporters and editors with unpleasant questions.” Kevin Klose, the new dean of the J-school at the University of Maryland, has suggested that a consortium approach could provide the same reader-advocacy function for less money.

The president and publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal delivered a rousing defense of the newspaper industry a couple of weeks ago in a speech that was just published yesterday. Arnold Garson used facts, statistics and a few points of information we hadn’t seen before to argue that the industry’s impending doom is greatly over-exaggerated, concluding that “The Courier-Journal will publish my obituary and yours, but not its own.” The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) should make him an industry spokesman.

The 3,400-word speech is well worth reading its own right, but here are the Cliff Notes of what Garson said:

• Yes, some newspapers have closed this year, but compared to the carnage among auto dealers and real estate brokers, the industry looks pretty good. Markets can adjust without collapsing.
• The Courier-Journal has cut back just like everybody else. That’s part of running a sustainable business.
• The most troubled newspapers today are those covered by now-irrelevant duopoly agreements that have kept weak competitors afloat. “Newspapers in Joint Operating Agreements are going to disappear,” he said, adding that this consolidation process has been going on for over a decade.
• The Courier-Journal‘s market penetration is up five percent over the last two years. The company’s print, online and mobile products now reach 85% of the adults in its core market every week and touch them an average of 5.6 times each week. By contrast, this year’s Super Bowl reached only 41.5% of the US adult population.
• One of the reasons is that the Courier-Journal has the dominant local website in its market.
• The big reason circulation is trending down? “Do Not Call. This federal legislation enacted in 2003 shut down overnight the newspaper industry’s No. 1 subscriber acquisition tool, and the only acquisition method that is economically efficient.” Garson added that Do Not Call legislation forced publishers to revise their business models, which had been based on high churn and low acquisition cost, to models based on high retention. This transition triggered circulation declines, but the situation is stabilizing.
• Young adults do read newspapers. Garson said his printed newspaper reaches 74 percent of the 18-34 year-olds in its market every week.

Wrapping up a persuasive argument, Garson imagines holding a press conference to announce a new product called a newspaper to a world that had only known electronic publishing. He ticks off the advantages: compact, professionally organized, factual, porn-free and you can read it on an airplane. The NAA should package up this idea instead of its current baffling Rube Goldberg campaign.

Clearly, not all publishers are the Courier-Journal. Judging from Garson’s commentary, the paper understood some time ago that it needed to focus itself locally and use all the channels its customers were using. There are also undoubtedly some factors that are unique to Louisville that support the Courier-Journal‘s relative health.

However, there are lessons any publishing executive can learn from Garson’s spirited defense. Statistics can work two ways and this publisher has dug up a few that make his business prospects look pretty good.

A chance meeting with a reader this morning reminded us of this 2004 video by the Museum of Media History, which we realize not everyone has seen. It’s a futuristic look back from the year 2015 at Google’s successful march to aggregate and customize the world’s information. Although dated, it’s startlingly accurate in some respects. It’s kind of cool till you get near the end. Then, well, you decide.

If the new owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune are planning to reinvent the news operation, they made a surprising choice in appointing Ed Moss (right), a 32-year newspaper veteran, to lead the charge. Moss was most recently president and CEO of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group and publisher of the Daily News of Los Angeles, as well as eight other titles. He’s is known for his ability to focus on local communities, so it could be that owner Platinum Equity is taking “hyper-local” to heart.

“I’m all about local, local, local – local news, local advertising,” Moss told the U-T. “That’s our niche. The way to differentiate ourselves is to be as local across the company as we can.”

Moss is an advertising guy. He’s been a publisher at papers in California, Ohio, Michigan and Louisiana and also held several advertising sales positions. He told the U-T that there is an unlocked opportunity in sales to local advertisers and that he would move aggressively to capture that business.

“I like to move very, very quickly,” he said. “And I like to build a culture that believes you have to move quickly.”The piece quotes past colleagues saying Moss is a nice guy, a visionary and a great leader. One of his prior bosses is David Black, who’s advising Platinum on the U-T’‘s makeover.

Lessons From the NY Newspaper Strike

If the past is any clue to the future, then the New York newspaper strike of 1962-63 may offer a glimpse of what a nation without daily newspapers would look like. Slate’s Jack Shafer has a wonderful account of what a news-starved city did when the strike crippled all of its newspapers for nearly four months.

In short: it improvised. Non-unionized dailies in the boroughs saw circulation explode. The Philadelphia Inquirer imported thousands of daily copies. Radio and TV stations began reporting real news instead of just parroting what the dailies said. The Village Voice exploded out of anonymity to become the flagship of alternative weeklies. Tom Wolfe sought freelance income by writing an article for Esquire that would launch his book-writing career. Shafer cites example after example of what a population that had been accustomed to consuming 5.7 million newspapers a day did when it suddenly had none. They made do. And the world went on.

Which is what will happen when major metro dailies begin to close or scale back: Alternatives will rush in to fill the void. People will get their news elsewhere, and what they can’t get will be delivered by entrepreneurs who figure out a way to deliver it at a profit. Destruction is an ugly thing, but it’s usually a necessary precursor to reinvention. Shafer shrewdly notes, “The least reliable source for what the end of newspapers means is usually the newspaper men, who are too stuck in their roles to reimagine the world.” Once you shed assumptions, then possibilities open up.

Miscellany

With 39 more layoffs last week, the San Francisco Chronicle has brought its staff reduction total to 151 since March, or about where ownership said it had to be to achieve short-term equilibrium. The cost-cutting is unlikely to end there, though. According to the San Francisco Business Times, “the Chronicle will rely increasingly on freelancers and non-staff unpaid or poorly paid bloggers to fill the paper, in many cases using former staffers.” With so many laid-off journos on the street, what’s happening to the per-word rate you’ve been able to get? Comment below.

Online strategist Matt Maggard posts a lengthy proscription for change at the Los Angeles Times. He’s even redesigned the home page of the website for them. Maggard calls his essay “an open proposal. This includes a summary of value in the digital marketplace, how the Times can improve its product and how journalism should evolve its practices and business models to survive. I’m sending this around as an open proposal to help jump-start the discussion on what can be done to save the industry.” We didn’t find a lot of revolutionary thinking in the proposal, but its recommendations seem sound enough.

The state of Washington is shifting some of the burden of propping up a dying industry onto the taxpayers, approving a 40 percent cut in the state’s main business tax for publishers and printers. What’s next, rebates for the recording industry? The Seattle Times‘ 95-word news bite on the subject inspires more than 220 comments, indicating that the recession-plagued populace might feel just a wee bit strongly about this lobbyist-inspired giveback.

For newspaper publishers who whine that Google is an Internet parasite, Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker offers a brief tutorial in the workings of the robots.txt file, which enables publishers to easily block the company’s search spider whenever they want.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has published a 56-page report called “Outlook for newspaper publishing in the digital age.” Our day job hasn’t permitted us to consume the entire document yet, but based upon this PWC summary, we probably won’t bother. The bottom line appears to be conventional wisdom that the print model is troubled, the future is in multiple media and the revenue mix has to shift away from a sole reliance on advertising. We suspect PriceWaterhouseCoopers will be more than happy to help publishers make the shift.

And Finally…

Ryan Pagelowis a reporter at the Lake County News-Sun in Waukegan, Ill. a contributor to Mad magazine (talk about a venerable print title) and a recipient of the Charles Schulz National College Cartoonist Award. He also pens a clever daily comic called Pressed, which he describes as “a behind-the-scenes look at a newsroom that’s trying to survive in an online world of tweeting blogospheres. It features a frazzled editor, reporters, a blogger and an assortment of politicians, weasels and snitches.” Check this out. It’s good.

Exuberance over the new Amazon Kindle as a potential salve for the news industry’s pain is beginning to fade as analysts dissect the financial realities. Amazon created a stir last week by introducing a large-screen version of the electronic book that does a decent job of rendering the familiar look and feel of a printed newspaper. It also announced that The New York Times, the Washington Post and others have signed up to deliver their content for a real live subscription fee. Hallelujah! Readers paying for the news!

Buried in the excitement were the terms that Amazon is demanding its news partners accept in order to join the parade: Amazon gets to keep 70% of the subscription fees. This is a huge strategic mistake that Amazon should address toute de suite.

Critics are already taking apart the strategy. Writing on Columbia Journalism Review, Ryan Chittum runs the numbers. “So of the $14 a month a reader pays for a The New York Times, say, the Times itself actually gets about $4.20. The rest goes to Amazon and to the wireless carrier that transmits the data.” He figures that if every one of the Times‘ subscribers signed up for a Kindle stream at $14/month, the revenue would barely cover the cost of the paper’s newsroom operations. And that’s assuming the Times kept all the money; in reality, it keeps only 30%

Amazon has a historic opportunity. Lacking serious competition, Kindle could own the market for electronic newspaper delivery over the next couple of years. Amazon should be making it a no-brainer for every news organization in the world to deliver content over its device. Instead of taking 70% of the subscription fees, it should be giving 90% of those fees to the publishers in a land-grab bid for market share. Alas, it’s trying to make a few quick bucks up front on a group that can’t afford to pay, and it’s mortgaging its long-term franchise in the process. It’s very un-Amazon-like to think so tactically. There’s still time to undo the damage and let’s hope it does so.

Writer Stephen Silver says the Kindle suffers from a more basic problem: it’s newspaper interface sucks “It’s slow, hard to navigate and in no way preferable to the newspaper interfaces on any smart phone, much less the Web,” he writes on North Star Writers Group. “Hell, the Times application on the BlackBerry my dad had five years ago was better-looking and easier to use than the Kindle’s version is now.”

Manifesto for Reinvention

As he does so often, Mark Potts hits the nail on the head with an essay on the lack of a magic bullet for suffering publishers. Kicking off with a short swipe at the Kindle-as-messiah craze, Potts digs in to the real problems publishers have to address: they’re too broad, too inwardly focused, and too addicted to traditional advertising models.

Potts runs down a list of changes publishers need to make in order to survive in an atomized information world. There’s nothing on his list that hasn’t been suggested before, but the summary brings a common-sense rationality to the debate. This is like a checklist for survival.

We are swimming in information, he notes. So why not aggregate what’s already out there instead of spending money on reporters to generate more information? Sounds good to us. The market for local advertising is estimated to be $25 billion annually. No one has figured out how to unlock it. Metro daily newspapers are in the best position to do that. So why are they still chasing national display advertising accounts?  This piece is like a short manifesto for reinvention that publishers should frame and hang on their walls.

Miscellany

The publisher of the Utica Observer-Dispatch was probably just trying to be folksy in devoting her column to the most common complaints readers have about their newspapers, but she inadvertently ends up make an argument for why print is dying so quickly. Five days to get a letter to the editor published is actually pretty good, says Donna Donovan. “If there’s a lag in your letter getting in, it might be because we couldn’t reach you to verify it, or we have a backlog.” Five days??

Now that it has a monopoly in Denver, MediaNews Group is going to start charging readers for some content. Readers won’t pay by the article, but will get a vague set of bundled services that includes fees for content. Exactly what those services will be hasn’t been specified. The whole plan sounds pretty vague at this point.

Someone has bid $13,000 for a non-paying internship at Huffington Post, the website often cited as a next-generation news publication. And the bidding doesn’t end for another two weeks. Proceeds go to charity. Believe us, it’s a lot cheaper to start a blog.

Metro International S.A. of Sweden will sell its US papers to a company run by its former CEO. The deal includes papers in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. They represent a combined circulation of 590,000 and 1.2 million readers. The company has been on a campaign to reduce expenses, and the US operations have been consistent money-losers. Metro International operates more than 81 editions in 22 countries. CFO Anders Kronborg says he “doesn’t see any growth in the [US] market this year or in 2010.”

Newspaper Blogger Shares Stage with Publicists

Science and technology columnist Dave Brooks of the Nashua Telegraph has come up with a novel approach to generating material for his GraniteGeek blog on the paper’s website: He’s handing over partial control to the University of New Hampshire news service. The publicity organization will “post items about science and social science research at the university…directly on GraniteGeek whenever it wants (probably once a week), and I have no control over it,” Brooks writes. “That’s something that would have been unthinkable not long ago.”

It’s not unthinkable any more, though. “Slightly to my surprise, reaction in the newsroom has been uniformly favorable,” Brooks wrote in an e-mail to us. “I knew the publisher and online editor would like it, since it drives traffic, but even a reporter who I suspected would balk – he’s an uber-traditionalist when it comes to media ethics – thought it was fine, that it ‘added to the discussion.”’ Entries from the news service are clearly labeled with their source. Staffers are also apparently willing to accept the philosophy that “standards are different for news blogs that for newsprint.”

Miscellany

Christian Science Monitor editor John Yemma, who was one of the first print veterans to pull the plug on paper, comments dispassionately on new research that shows that consumers now prefer to receive information online rather than in print. Yemma also cites recent comments by investor Warren Buffett that he wouldn’t buy a newspaper at any price as evidence that the decline of print is unstoppable. “The man famous for determining fundamental value in a stock before investing sees none in this industry, despite beaten down share prices,” Yemma writes. “…In a hundred thousand individual decisions, readers touch off the process of creative destruction. And increasingly readers seem to be deciding that daily print and ink are unnecessary.”

In announcing pay cuts, reductions in health-care plan support and another buyout offer, the Newark Star-Ledger revealed that it now expects its advertising revenue for the year to be 48 percent less than it was in 2006.

A commenter on McClatchy Watch who appears to have some knowledge of what company management is thinking, says there are no more plans for staff cuts at the company. McClatchy realizes it cut too deeply in the last round of layoffs and has to focus on revenue growth instead of more cost reduction to dig out of its hole. Refreshing philosophy, if true.

The founders of Elauwit Media, a community media company based in Haddonfield, N.J. write of the decline of major metro dailies with not a small amount of pride. Their business is growing nicely, thank you, from $100,000 in revenue in 2004 to $2.4 million in 2008. The secret: “Everybody Gets It. Everybody Reads It.” In other words, stop charging subscribers. “Huge regional daily newspapers would do better to stop requiring people to subscribe and instead deliver the paper to everybody in their target demographic…If big newspapers would charge the advertisers, not the readers, they could still turn things around.” Why didn’t we think of that?

The San Francisco Chronicle laid off “more than a dozen top reporters” last week, according to a story on the local CBS website. There are few specifics, but given that the Chronicle is trying to cut its way from $50 million in annual losses to break-even, you can expect more to come.

Daniel Baum, who was fired from the New Yorker in 2007, is taking the very un-New Yorker approach of  tweeting the story, as well as details about the inner workings of the literary magazine. We doubt the New Yorker has ever said anything in 140 characters.