[W]e have a world in which phone companies have accustomed kids to paying up to 20 cents when they send a text message but it seems technologically and psychologically impossible to get people to pay 10 cents for a magazine, newspaper or newscast. [From Facebook | How to Save Your Newspaper – TIME]
My comments on FaceBook:
I haven’t read this piece [obviously, I have now] but I am continually puzzled over the handwringing. For years, newspapers have ceded ground to free papers (100% ad supported) and craigslist and the internet, acting as if broadsheets have a right to exist and tabloids are a different species. News organizations may be enshrined in the Constitution as a necessary element of democracy, but that’s a responsibility, not an entitlement.
Maybe this question is answered in the TIME piece, but how are revenues split between advertisers and readers? Just as people worried about ownership consolidation and corporate ownership of media source, what are the options for the newspapers? Who will pay the bills and to whom will they owe their allegiance?
Isaacson does mention the notions of allegiance and responsibility, quoting Henry Luce. Not something we hear much about: I hear that newspapers must survive but I don’t hear why or how they expect to.