Here’s a hilariously snarky Gawker article about Time Magazine, as well as other paper news sources, trying to figure out how to squeeze the proverbial blood from a turnip and charge readers for online content. Among the heavies is the New York Times, one of the only news sources that actually reports on real news. I don’t have the solution but unless the subscription rate is a very low, all-access monthly fee ($5-$10 per month) and the site is shut off to non-subscribers (the front page just being a login screen and a link to the subscription page), not even the New York Times is going to make this happen.

If I had to propose a solution, it would be tastefully integrated online advertisements (which many of these online news sources already employ), a low subscriber fee for premium content (such as New York Times Magazine, the Book Review, the arts section, all reviews, opinions, and content written specifically for entertainment and enlightenment — all straight national and world news should remain free, I think), cut the salaries of those at the top unless they actually do something worthwhile and are irreplaceable, and… drum roll… stop printing daily newspapers. Instead, print a weekly magazine (connected to a subscription apart from the the online subscription) that can be bought at the news stand or mailed to a subscriber’s home that condenses all the important news that happened throughout the week. If all this could be integrated with automatic download or RSS of desired sections with a subscriber’s iPhone/BlackBerry/Kindle, that would make it all the better. I really feel like all this I’ve mentioned is common sense but maybe I’m crazy. I’d like to meet the technology officers from some of these bigger newspapers and magazines; my bet is that they’re all in their 60s, overpaid, and undereducated about how the online world works. To them, the internet is just a series of tubes.

Ultimately, though, there are very few newspapers/magazines/journals that I’ll actually pay for. If the New York Times wasn’t free online, I would pay for it. But Time Magazine? C’mon. Time decided sometime in the 90s that they no longer wanted to be a serious news source. Last time I looked at a Time, it felt overloaded with celebrity gossip and various fluff. If you’re not providing valuable, original content, what will keep people coming back? Journalism has really been debased in the last decade or two; it used to mean something. There are still serious journalists out there, but they’re a dying breed.

What newspaper or magazine would you pay for if you could get the content in no other way?

Related posts:

1. The last words of Rocky Mountian News staff
2. In Defense of the Kindle
3. To Publish in Print or Online
4. The Life and Death of a Book Critic at the Seattle PI
5. John Cheever… have you heard of this guy?

Tags: blackberry, gawker, internet, iphone, journals, kindle, magazines, new york times, newspapers, technology, time magazine