Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Actual Profit in News?

For a number of years I've contended that newspaper publishers are conceptual blindlings. They seem to think that the substrate is more important than the content--that is, that dead trees are what people purchase, instead of what's REPORTED on those sacrificial pines.

Oh, well. Maybe somebody figured it out:

...L.A. Times editor Russ Stanton is said to have said, that the Times’ Web revenue now exceeds the cost of running the Times’ newsroom. “That’s momentous,” said Jarvis, since it suddenly means at least one major metro paper really could turn itself into a Web-only professional news operation. He writes:

“What if, once past bankruptcy and the cost of shutting down print operations, the LA Times as a news service could be profitable and grow? Yes, grow. News is a growth industry today; newspapers aren’t. But they could be again.

“If they do it right, the papers shifts from relentless shrinkage back to practically limitless growth

One would think that "limitless" should be discarded as an adjective except when defining the universe, or the powers of God.

But charging readers a buck a week for full access to internet news certainly has its possibilities.

Except for the blind.

HT: P-Mac

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