On Newspapers and Google: What’s the Real Problem Here? What Do Readers Want?

“There are trust issues too, but they tie into the main problem
I see, which is that news content has never been what primarily
funded newspapers, and it *should* never be. It was the ads and the
listings that funded print newspapers, and they flew the coop and
landed on Craigslist. That loss of a revenue stream is the
principal problem, and newspapers have to find some replacement.
Charging for news articles or even ads on news articles won’t do it
online any more than it did in print. They have to offer something
people want, something they’ll pay for, something that will be as
remunerative as the listings that went to Craigslist were.

“They have to sell something besides news that people will pay
for that will fund the journalism. There. I said it.

“Why did the classified ads go to Craigslist? Because new
technology showed up, and you can’t win with an old mousetrap once
a better mousetrap shows up. Is there any reason newspapers
couldn’t have provided what Craigslist did? Other than thinking of
it, I mean? They could have done Google too, for that matter. And
now they’re mad because others thought of things they could have
thought of but didn’t, because they didn’t know how.”

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