There was no gold. I looked.

The newspaper industry, they gave it away online for a decade or more, suddenly decided to charge for it online and now, I’m sure, are stupefied by this news:

Now that roughly a third of the nation’s newspapers are charging for access to their web and mobile content, the early evidence suggests that digital audiences aren’t nearly as enthusiastic about paying for news as publishers are about charging for it.

Although digital-only subscribers make up 37.6% of the total circulation of the Wall Street Journal and 34.4% of the total readership of the New York Times, the number of digital-only subscribers at Gannett, the largest publisher of general-interest newspapers in the land, is 2.2% of its average aggregate weekday circulation of 3 million subscribers.

Notwithstanding the relative productivity of their paywalls, the paid penetration at the Journal and the Times pales in comparison to the success that Netflix, Spotify, Major League Baseball and other ventures have had in selling entertainment-oriented digital content.

Some of those entertainment and news comparisons stretch the bonds of credulity, but they do say one thing: People will pay for a service online, just not the news.

It is simple economic theory, really. You can easily charge for a scarcity. There is a great volume of news, analysis and information around us. Some of it isn’t worth the download to be sure, but a great deal of it is readily available.

You might say it isn’t the news they need. You might be right, to an extent. You might also be called an elitist gatekeeper for saying that.

At the end of the day your news seeker is a resourceful individual. He or she has plenty of options to find what they want, or at the very least, enough to make them feel they’ve gotten what they need.

So the search for a compelling and profitable news model will continue. Even as I remind you that news has always been a (civically minded) loss leader.

Speaking of losses … now you can find out how much the Affordable Care Act is going to cost you. Finally.

Also, my insurance is increasing, so that’s nice.

Our state doesn’t get the opportunity to brag about education frequently enough, but here’s one where we are on the top of the list: Alabama high school students lead nation in increase in passing advanced placement tests.

Reviewed the newspaper this afternoon. They are designing a sharp looking product — and they were only in the newsroom until 2:30 this morning, so that is an improvement. Today we talked about story selection and word use.

Pretty soon I’ll run out of things to find wrong and will simply be down to the very subjective things.

Here is the rainbow I saw on the way home this evening:

rainbow

One of the meteorologists said there was a storm in some little town, a wide spot on the road really, to my east. I was on the interstate about 20 miles away. I glanced up and saw the clouds. I looked back to the road. I glanced up again and saw the rainbow.

Here’s a post on the multimedia blog.

Here’s something from Tumblr.

There’s more on Twitter.

Comments are closed.