Rall: 'Newspapers should go offline'

Posted by Leah McBride Mensching on July 31, 2008 at 11:39 PM

Even though more people than ever read newspapers, an increasing number read them online for free, while a decreasing number read then in print. At The New York Times, for example, a print reader generates about 170 times as much revenue as an online reader; therefore, no matter what newspapers do to cut costs, they can't do enough to make up for lost revenues when income has dropped to 1/170th, Ted Rall states in his latest column Thursday.

And although it's unlikely the newspaper industry will try out his suggestions, Rall has a few for returning newspapers to their previous profitable selves: go offline, copyright every article in the newspaper and cut off wire services.

These suggestions respond to two structural problems, neither of which the newspaper industry seems able to solve: “One is the Web in general, which offers advertisers more finely targeted access to readers. The other is news on the Web, which is free on sites like Google and Yahoo ... as well as the newspaper Web sites themselves,” Rall states.

In the online news world, better loses to good enough, “but it doesn't have to,” Rall writes. “All three of my suggestions are predicated on the simplest principle of capitalism: scarcity increases demand. Newspapers have made news free and plentiful, which is why they're going broke.”

Rall further explains his suggestions:

1. Newspapers should go offline: “If the last decade has proven anything, it's that you can't charge for a product – in this case, news – tht you give away. So stop! All the members of the Newspaper Association of America should shut down their Web sites. At the very least,papers ought to charge online readers twice as much as for print subscriptions – searchability must be worth something. Want news? Buy a 'dead tree' newspaper.”

2. Copyright every article in the newspaper: Rall quotes Chris Hedges: “'The majority of bloggers and Internet addicts, like the endless rows of talking heads on television, do not report ... they are largely parasites who cling to traditional news outlets ... They rarely pick up the phone, much less go out and find a story. Nearly all reporting – I would guess at least 80 percent – is done by newspapers and wire services. Take that away and we have a huge black hole.' And a lot of unfulfilled demand one can charge for.” And because gathering the news is time consuming, expensive and “requires extensive infrastructure,” news outlets should be compensated for those expenses, and therefore enforce a copyright on every piece of news it releases. This means that broadcast media outlets that “currently lift their news reports out of newspapers – without forking over a cent – would have to hire reporters or pay papers a royalty. Paying newspapers for usage, even at a high rate, would probably be cheaper.”

3. Cut off wire services: Wire services can pick up articles written by a local newspaper and sell them for low reprint fees to other newspapers and to online players, like Google. “At a bare minimum, newspapers that originate stories out to require wires to charge would-be reprinters the thousands of dollars each piece is worth. Better yet, don't post them in the first place.”

Of course, these solutions won't work unless every newspaper follows them, and even if they do, anti-trust laws could become a problem, as well as the now widely-held sentiment that information should be free, Rall states.

To read Rall's entire column, visit his blog at Uexpress.com.