1:The essay is for the people who were present at the event/ incident but did not take part, David Simsons forgives him-self.
2:Arthur Sulzberger Jr.publisher of The New York Times and Katharine Weymouth, publishers of The Washington Post.
3:good information should not be free and paid for by people.
4:using online websites in order to pay for subscriptions can be seen as dangerous.
5:Rupert Muroch believe that it is easier for U.S. newspaper publishers could meet in a bathroom somewhere and talk bluntly for fifteen minutes
6:National newspapers continue to retrench and regional papers are destroyed outright.
7:You must act together, both news organizations must inform readers that their Web sites will be free to subscribers only.
8:No half-measures, no TimesSelect program that charges for a handful of items and offers the rest for free, no limited availability of certain teaser articles.
9:You must both also individually inform the wire-service consortiums that unless they limit membership to publications, online or off, that provide content only through paid subscriptions.
10: When the Justice Department lawyers ask why America’s
two national newspapers did these things made the paywall argument. Say, We
never talked. Not a word. We read some rant in the Columbia Journalism Review
that made the paywall argument.
11: The Times and The Post are ongoing, according to
sources at both papers.
12: Should the Times go behind a pay curtain while the Post
remains free, or vice versa?
13: Will it work?
14: For the Times and The Post, entities that are still
providing the lion’s share of journalism’s national, international, and
cultural relevance-their reach has never been greater.
15: Print circulation into a profit center for the first
time in years, by raising the price, with news stand prices rising in June to
$2 and up to $6 on Sunday.
16: If the only way to read the Times is to buy the
Times, online or off, then readers who clearly retain a desire for that product
will reach for their wallets.
17: The newspaper is all but dead, they will insist. Long
live the citizen journalist.
18: While their resentment and frustration with
newspapers, given the industry’s reduced editorial ambitions are justified.
19: In the ensuing thirty years, we have become a nation
that shells out $60, $70, or $120 in monthly cable fees.
20: Content is all.
21: Wall Street command profit margins of 25 and 30
percent.
22: Unlike television, in which industry leaders were
constantly reinvesting profits in research and development, where a new
technology like cable reception would be contemplated for all its potential and
opportunity.
23: The remaining monopoly newspapers in American cities,
roped together in unwieldy chains and run by men and women who had, by and
large, been reared in boardrooms rather than newsrooms.
24: In the 1970s, American auto manufacturing was complicit in its own
marginalization through exactly the same mindset: Why not churn out Pacers and
Gremlins and Vegas, providing cheap, shoddy vehicles that would be rapidly
replaced with newer cheap, shoddy vehicles?
25: The analogy doesn't quite capture the extraordinary
incompetence exhibited by the newspaper industry.
26: A blog here, a citizen journalist there, a news Web
site getting under way in places where the newspaper is diminished.
27: Detroit lost to a better, new product; newspapers,
to the vague suggestion of one.
28: A certain wonderment that so many otherwise smart people
in newspapering could have so mistaken the Internet and its implications.
29: There is firstly the familiar industrial dynamic in
which leaders raised in one world are taken aback to find they have
underestimated the power of an emerging paradigm.
30: In 1995 the Baltimore Sun were explaining the value
of their free Web site in these terms: this is advertising for the
newspaper.
31: On the business side, they were a little busy
hurling profits at Wall Street to pay much attention.
32: When newspapers never charged readers what it actually cost to get the
product to their doorstep.
33: This specific dynamic maximized everyone’s
blindness to the real possibilities of a subscription model.
34: For example, if The Baltimore Sun’s product isn't
available in any other fashion than through subscription, online or off and if
there is no profit to be had in delivering the paper product to homes at
existing rates.
35: Consider: 10 percent of the existing 210,000 Baltimore
Sun readers, for example, who pay a subscription rate less than half the price
of home delivery, or roughly $10, would represent about $2.5 million a year.
36: Last, and perhaps most disastrous, the rot began at
the bottom and it didn’t reach the highest rungs of the profession until far
too much damage had been done.
37: As early as the mid 1980s, the civic indifference
and contempt of product inherent in chain ownership was apparent in many
smaller American markets.
38: Last year at The Washington Post, the paper’s first
major buyout arrived at about the time of its six Pulitzer victories.
39: To employ another historical metaphor: when they came
for the Gannett papers, I said nothing, because I was not at a Gannett paper.
40: For the industry, it is later than it should be; where a
transition to online pay models would once have been easier with a healthy
product, now the odds for some papers are long.
41: If the Times and The Post go ahead and build that wall,
one possible scenario will be that The Times and The Post survive, their
revenue streams balanced by still-considerable print advertising, the bump in
the price of home delivery and newsstand sales, and can lead profitable online subscriptions.
42: Reassured that they can risk going behind the paywall
without local readers getting free national, international, and cultural
reporting from the national papers.
43: Some of the chain dailies may well make the mistake of taking the
fresh revenue and rushing it back to Wall Street.
44: Others do reinvest in their newsrooms, hiring back
some of the talent lost.
45: Scenario two: In those cities where regional papers collapse, the vacuum
creates an opportunity for new, online subscription-based news organizations
that cover state and local issues, sports, and finance.
46: In a metro region the size of Baltimore, where 300,000 once subscribed to a
healthy newspaper, imagine an initial market penetration of a tenth of that
30,000 paid subscribers (in a metro region of more than 2.5 million), who are
willing to pay $10 per month.
47: That’s $300,000 a month in revenue, or $3.6 million a year, with zero
printing or circulation costs.
48: Round it up to $4 million in total revenue, then knock off a half million
in operating and promotional costs.
49: Third scenario is except for one in which professional
journalism doesn't endure in any form, this is the worst of all worlds.
50: Imagine major American cities without daily newspapers, and further
imagine the Times or The Post employing just enough local journalists in
regional markets to produce zoned editions.
51: The longer it takes for the newspaper industry to get its act together, the
more likely it is that regional dailies will be too weak and hollow to step
through the online-subscription portal.
52: Mr. Sulzberger and Ms. Weymouth have
yet to turn that last card. Until they find the will and the courage to do so,
no scenario other than the slow strangulation of paid, professional journalism
applies.
David simons's-
The argument in this essay is about what effect audiences
would have if newspapers set up online pay walls. Throughout the essay Simon
looks at two newspapers “the times” and “the Washington post”. He looks at the
effects of what happens when a newspaper introduce a paywall or if the newspaper
is free and how that effect audiences as well as on competition. Arthur
Sulzberger Jr.publisher of The New York Times and Katharine Weymouth, publishers
of The Washington Post are that main focus of this essay. The essay
looks at how charging users for reading newspapers online if effectively and
profitable or does it lead to a fall in customers. Due to the decline of
newspapers it had mean that many newspapers are closing down due to people
using “free” information. The essay looks how good information is and does a
newspaper that paid for provide better information and give audiences a better insight.
Customers don’t want to pay a lot of money for things that are not beneficial nor
useful to them and therefore means that customers may not pay a large fee in
order to subscribe online newspapers. In this essay Simson looks at 3 possible
situation if the times and the post were to go ahead and introduce a pay subscription,
this suggests that Simon believe that my introducing a pay wall it can have a
massive effect on the audience.
comments-
"I know that commentary—the froth and foam of print journalism—sells itself cheaply and well on thousands of blogs. I know that the relationships between newspapers and online aggregators—not to mention The Associated Press and Reuters—will have to be revisited and revised. True, all true."
This suggests that simon agree that newspapers are in decline and that information is more easily available however it is not all true and therefore several sources need to be compared in order to ensure reliability.
"The proof is that while online aggregation and free newspaper Web sites have combined to batter paid print circulation figures, more people are reading the product of America’s newspapers than ever before."
this suggests that Simon feels that there is still demand for physical newspapers and that people still prefer this however they don't want to may for it.
"The Times and The Post survive, their revenue streams balanced by still-considerable print advertising, the bump in the price of home delivery and newsstand sales, and, finally, a new influx of cheap yet profitable online subscriptions."
this suggest that he feel that if a pay wall is introduced then it means that demand may fall for physical newspapers and therefore only those who really want it would be able to get it however at a premium.
i believe that newspaper should have a pay wall the reason for this is because it means that journerlists can be paid and therefore more research and dedication can be done on certain stories which means that more information can be provided as well as reliability. i also believe that in order for newspapers to survive they need to provide something which is unique and make them wanted among customers. finally i believe that newspapers can be considered a "luxury" or "premium item" due to customers who really want would be wiling to pay and other will result in looking at free sources in order to find there information.
