The way of how content is made and paid for all media is changing, because the internet has aggregated and streamlined how we want our media and when we want our media. For example, my parents in their 50’s and 60’s don’t even read a newspaper and barely watch the local news anymore, and I don’t now, because I know and they know if something is really big happening in Phoenix that we should know about like the Jodi Arias trial, we will see it on the internet somewhere because the aggregated websites have our location or I will hear about it on cable news.

I sell print advertising for a Regional College Coupon Book, and there is no longer a need for a print or online newspapers and that’s the just of it. So for better or for worse, people want to read, watch, and hear what they’re interested in, not what publishers or producers want to tell them. For example, I think print newspapers are dinosaurs and I can’t believe people still pay for local newspapers, thus I Google “Newspapers going out of business” and this entertaining blog pops up and cost nothing.

Anyway, I’m sorry for people that are losing their jobs, because I may someday lose my job if we can’t make it being completely online someday and by continually being able to be a local community marketer. Bottom line, the internet has given the individual a voice more so then any media has ever done, and that’s why the traditional media in a lot of cases is losing to the internet and will lose.

I have come up with the answer.

Eventually, enough others will also come up with the same answer, that it will treated as more than an irritating mosquito buzz.

Journalism for money, money for journalism.

When you have no 18th century monopoly, you have to revert to the voluntary exchange of the free market.

Journalists invite those who want them to produce journalism to pay them to do so.

You don’t charge people for access to news. The people pay journalists to produce it. Given the people have paid for it, you can’t expect to charge them a second time to access what they’ve already paid for (unless you’re still hung up on copyright).

Think crowdfunding Amanda Palmer, but more fluid…

I think that the problem with the newspaper business was/is that, even during the decline, there was a great deal of money to be made. It’s only as things really began to be dire in the past few years that publishers had to start getting creative about their revenue streams. Even in online, publishers got lazy and depended on banner ads long after they started their inexorable slide to the bottom of the pricing/effectiveness scales.

A lot of people in the industry scoffed at John Paton’s stack of digital dimes. Now, it seems, everyone wants to stack them. That’s good, but there’s still a need for more creativity in building a sustainable revenue and new-user stream for the coming years. As you point out, the “new ideas” aren’t exactly new to those of us who have been haunting these blogs and comment streams for years, but even that will not be enough. It’s merely a good start.