InDenverTimes.com is future of online newspapers

When the Rocky Mountain News shut down, several of its reporters banded together to create the online-only InDenverTimes.com. This innovative effort in part represents one of the new business models we've been saying newspapers should consider -- the "ELECTRONIC SUBSCRIPTION: Charge fees for electronic editions" option you can vote for in the poll to the right. However; InDenverTimes.com provides you news for free, and asks you to subscribe for more interactive features.

A press conference announcing the formation of the newspaper:



While there are other online-only newspapers started by small groups of former print journalists, this marks the first time a large group of reporters from a major newspaper have launched an online venture on such a large scale. This is very different from the recent transition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to an online-only newspaper. InDenverTimes.com is a grassroots effort that is by no means trying to be a carbon copy of the Rocky Mountain News.

In order for InDenverTimes.com to survive, the online newspaper must have 50,000 subscribers by April 23, which would pave the way for the full version of the paper to go live May 4. Even then, the paper's news will continue to be free, but you'll be subscribing for as low as $4.99 a month to get access to "live blogging, live chatting, commenting" and other tools for interacting with readers and reporters. For more information about the paper's effort to get subscribers, click here.

Not only is this a story of several firsts in the modern newspaper era, but InDenverTimes.com is attempting to bridge a new connection between reporters and readers. For several months now, Scooping the News has been demanding that newspapers realize the importance of reconnecting with readers. That invisible barrier between the two sides must be erased. The following are some YouTube videos that tell the story of InDenverTimes.com and show how this is a newspaper dedicated to connecting with readers.