'I think charges are coming,' says former editor

While The Wall Street Journal charges fees for access to some online content, no major dailies have made their Web sites completely subscription based. That's about to change, though. Georgiana Vines, the former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, thinks our days of being "spoiled" with free online newspapers might be coming to an end.

"There's always the argument that there's quality if there's a charge for something. We've been spoiled because it's been free," Vines told Scooping the News. "I think charges are coming." She noted that the Knoxville News Sentinel recently reduced its home delivery service in nearby Johnson City, Tenn., and is now encouraging that city's residents to subscribe to the newspaper online.

To learn more about the Knoxville News Sentinel's electronic edition, click here. For a great online demonstration of what to expect when you subscribe to the electronic edition, click here. Vines said that aside from newspapers generating revenue from online subscriptions, there is one other way for newspapers to boost their chances of survival.

"It's going to have to be advertising, and it'll be based on the number of hits," said Vines, the former editor-in-chief of the El Paso Herald-Post. She suspects that the Knoxville News Sentinel is aware of the importance of Web site traffic. "They're trying to get the hits. There are ways to measure it. They're doing it, and that's what they're using to get into selling ads."

Editor's Note: This Scooping the News exclusive interview with Georgiana Vines took place Saturday, Feb. 21, 2009. Newsday in Long Island, N.Y., the 11th largest newspaper in the United States with a daily circulation of 379,613, announced Thursday that it's going to do what The New York Times is talking about -- charge readers of its online edition.

Rocky Mountain News publishing last paper Friday

E.W. Scripps Co. just announced that the Rocky Mountain News will print its last edition Friday, following a failed attempt to sell the struggling newspaper. This represents a huge closing in the Scripps newspaper division, and it may be the first of many U.S. metro dailies to fold this year.

Scripps first announced its intention to sell the newspaper in December, and company officials said then that the newspaper could close should a buyer not step up by mid-January. In a statement released this afternoon, the company confirmed that attempts to find a new owner resulted in "no qualified buyers."

The Rocky Mountain News was founded in 1859, and purchased by Scripps in 1926. It was Colorado's first newspaper. For full coverage of this breaking news event directly from the Rocky Mountain News, click here.

Editor's Note: Special thanks to our very own futurist, Donald G. Hartman, for informing us of this breaking news event.

Newspapers target Facebook, Twitter for readers, former SPJ president tells Scooping the News

Newspapers must embrace the Internet as the key to their survival, and the success of their online sites will depend on generating advertising revenue and increasing readership through the use of social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, according to Georgiana Vines, the former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.

The former editor-in-chief of the El Paso Herald-Post stressed the importance of newspaper Web sites. "I think they are the survival of newspapers, and I'm not in the group that thinks newspapers are dead. I think newspapers are changing, and it may be that the newspapers will have only the in-depth stories for readers and the breaking news will be solely on the Web," Vines told Scooping the News.

"It's clear that newspapers are counting on the Internet as part of their circulation for advertising purposes because they are now making reference to it. The E.W. Scripps Company has said that its strategy is to use advertising on the Web as a way to continue to have a healthy newspaper division," said Vines, who is the former deputy managing editor of the Scripps-owned Knoxville News Sentinel.

Twitter and Facebook are two social networking sites Vines singled out as playing crucial roles in boosting newspaper readership. "They're trying to use these social Web sites -- Twitter, Facebook, and all of this -- knowing that that's where young people are. They need young people, the targeted audience so to speak, to get into the newspaper. It's not the final product. It is using these social networks to get people to the major product, which is still the newspaper, but it's also their online section or their online product," Vines told Scooping the News.

Editor's Note: Coming Friday is the second part of a Scooping the News exclusive interview with Georgiana Vines, a former newspaper editor who once served as the national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. Vines currently teaches journalism at the University of Tennessee and writes a weekly column for the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Sell or close: Is the San Francisco Chronicle next?

Hearst Corp. first put the Seattle Post-Intelligencer up for sale Jan. 9 and said the newspaper would go Web-only or close should a buyer not step up within 60 days. Now Hearst might shut down the massive San Francisco Chronicle.

The newspaper owner announced last night that if major cost reductions cannot be ironed out "within weeks," then the Chronicle will be sold or shut down. The prospect of it being sold is slim, considering several major dailies are currently for sale without any potential buyers stepping up. Two such dailies are the Rocky Mountain News and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The Chronicle is by far the biggest metropolitan daily newspaper in the United States to face the prospect of shutting down. The newspaper's circulation is 370,345, placing it No. 12 on the list of highest U.S. newspaper circulation figures. The company's announcement Tuesday night stated that "major losses" first started hitting the newspaper in 2001.

When Scooping the News' Editor-in-Chief Chas J. Hartman worked at the Georgetown News-Graphic in Kentucky, that multi-weekly newspaper first started experiencing financial problems in late 2001. A survey of readers revealed that the newspaper's subscribers wanted more local content and human interest stories. Those stories set newspapers apart from all the other news sources available on the Web.

Editor's Note: Coming Thursday is the first part of a Scooping the News exclusive interview with Georgiana Vines, a former newspaper editor who once served as the national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. Vines currently teaches journalism at the University of Tennessee and writes a weekly column for the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Publishing your own magazine made easy by HP

A new Web site from Hewlett-Packard, http://magcloud.com, aims to help you publish your own magazine by handling the printing, mailing and subscription duties. All you have to do is create the magazine, no minor task in its own right, and upload the publication in PDF format to the Web.

The cost to publish a magazine on MagCloud is zero, and it's very easy to browse various magazines on the Web site. Now, when it comes to actually printing the magazine and selling it to customers, MagCloud charges a base price and you can set your magazine's price above that figure in order to turn a profit after MagCloud deducts its printing costs from any sales of your magazine.

This Web service proclaims itself as your very own "printing press". Just how good is the final product? "MagCloud uses HP Indigo technology, so every issue is custom-printed when it’s ordered. Printing on demand means no big print runs, which means no pre-publishing expense. Magazines are brilliant full color on 80lb paper with saddle-stitched covers. They look awesome," according to MagCloud's Web site.

Editor's Note: Coming Thursday is the first part of a Scooping the News exclusive interview with Georgiana Vines, a former newspaper editor who once served as the national president of the Society of Professional Journalists. Vines currently teaches journalism at the University of Tennessee and writes a weekly column for the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Newspapers talk fees; do blogs need copy editors?

It looks like the U.S. newspaper industry is shying away from the more user-friendly solution to its problems: Improve your Web sites to gain more readers, which will in turn entice advertisers to come back. Instead, some industry leaders are saying user fees, meaning you pay for newspaper stories online, are the only way out of this mess.

The New York Times is the biggest newspaper to come out recently and admit that it's considering user fees. The Wall Street Journal already charges customers for some online content, but people are willing to pay thanks to the fact that the Wall Street Journal's Web site is certainly one of the top five online newspapers. Will readers be willing to pay for content on other poorly-constructed Web sites when millions of other options exist for getting the news?

In a Business Week article about how The Associated Press is in discussions about locking out non-subscribers, the writer of the article, Jon Fine, even admits the potential risks newspapers take when imposing user fees. Fine writes that it's "unclear how this would work for a newspaper or a TV operation that does not want to wholly destroy existing traffic." "Destroy" is certainly the word to use. The articles goes on to mention that an AP-Google licensing deal expires in December, which until then could hold up part of the move toward user fees.

As more and more newspapers announce job cuts, bankruptcy filings, and moves toward becoming online only, there are more and more news sites and blogs popping up. One newly out-of-work copy editor says these news sites and blogs might benefit from adding people like himself. To read Kevin Braun's article titled "Will Edit, for Food," click here.

Also, for more excellent commentary and links to other articles about possible newspaper industry solutions, visit the blog Virtualjournalist and read the latest post.

Futurist introduces our 21st century news café

One of the hottest ideas for the future of newspapers discussed this week on the blogosphere is the idea of creating news cafés where reporters and readers connect. Click here for Save the Media's take on this, and click here for DigiDave's vision for this. The truth is that Scooping the News' very own futurist, Donald G. Hartman, first began discussing such an idea last year as a way to replace the huge printing presses currently occupying newspaper offices:

"Put it in the vast space created when the press disappeared. Bring some of the reporters and desks down to the café to be available to the café customers. The café would be a place to drink coffee and tea and have a bagel – for a fee of course. But more importantly it would be a gathering place for conversation and experiencing the news firsthand gathered around a news desk. 

Some facilitated method would probably be needed to allow organized group discussion led by the desk reporter of the hour. Reporters and columnists would be regularly scheduled to the café desk. These sessions could be taped and played on large screens in the café or broadcast via radio or video to other café locations or even a local cable channel outlet. Clearly there would be advertizing opportunities, but the business model needs further defined.

Such an idea could be adapted to 'sports news pub' venue within the pressroom space with beer on tap. A customer could come in to hear and banter with their favorite sports columnist. Other venues could be developed (the press space left vacant is huge) such as the 'political news cigar bar' or the 'cultural news winery'. All of these possibilities would have revenue generating potential and could be expanded to other spaces in the community beyond the pressroom."

Editor's Note: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary defines a futurist as "one whose chief interests are in what is to come; one who anxiously, eagerly, or confidently looks forward to the future; an expectant."

Twitter boosts blog readership; can it help papers?

Twitter is almost generating as many news articles and blog postings this year as all those "how to save the newspaper industry" ideas being hatched by current and former media executives. The biggest benefit of using Twitter, according to many bloggers, is that it helps boost readership on whatever sites you have linked with your Twitter account.

It's clear that people are using Twitter for a variety of reasons, whether it be social networking or simply wanting to hop onto the latest fad. But, there is strong evidence that bloggers who establish Twitter accounts are seeing boosts in blog readership, and that fact suggests that newspapers might experience the same fortune should they follow suit.

On her blog titled Save the Media, newspaper journalist Gina Chen provides specific examples of how Twitter benefits blogs and how Twitter can benefit journalists. For the former, Chen writes, "The verdict: 25 percent of the referrals on this blog came from Twitter since I started my blog in mid-December. That means 25 percent of people clicked links from Twitter to get to my blog."

The facts about Twitter are that once you establish an account, you start getting random people signing up to be followers based perhaps on something you mention in a tweet. These followers may sometimes click links you post (such as links to blogs), or they may not. However; it's apparent that operating on Twitter only raises exposure for blogs, so you can find Scooping the News' Twitter home here.

Twitter gets more press; will papers ignore it?

This morning's newspapers and blogs carried more stories about the latest Internet tool -- Twitter -- and the big question is whether this new avenue for communicating with readers will be ignored by an industry with a long history of resistance to change.

In an excellent post about what barriers might hinder journalists from taking advantage of Twitter, British journalist Sarah Hartley outlines five reasons that could really apply to many cases where the newspaper industry has failed to utilize new technology soon enough. These are the five excuses Hartley expects most journalists will have for not using Twitter:

"1. I don't see the point.
2. No one I deal with/write about/contact is on there.
3. I don't have the time.
4. I have something better.
5. I don't have anything to say that would interest anyone else."

So, while newspapers, blogs and everyone else continue to discuss Twitter's potential use in connecting reporters with readers, only time will tell whether reality lives up to the hype. For now, though, anyone with the power to publish is commending Twitter and the opportunities it presents.

Special Report Part 2: Newspaper cutbacks pave road toward wire services, home newsrooms

At some point in the not so distant future, metropolitan newspapers across the country will no longer operate in giant complexes with printing press crews and delivery carriers. Instead, former newspaper reporters will serve as local correspondents for international wire services, with their articles showing up on Web sites where readers personalize the content based on their location. Here's part two of why this is the only option newspapers have left.

Ever drive through your downtown and see these huge operating facilities that house newspapers? More and more of these facilities are trimming the number of days their printing presses run, eliminating their circulation departments (including the carriers), and even laying off the people who write the content. The first major milestone in the transformation of newspapers from print publications to Web-only publications will occur at the end of March, when The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News will limit home delivery to just three days a week.

As newspaper staffs shrink, those that remain are forced to multi-task. Recently, I listened to a photographer for a metropolitan daily newspaper explain how he now carries a video camera with him at all times because he is expected to snap photos and record video for his newspaper's Web site. That same newspaper has cut its photography staff from 10 to 5 and eliminated its entire imaging department. This McClatchy-owned newspaper has outsourced imaging to a location elsewhere in the United States. So, these photographers e-mail their photos from their cars to a location other than their newspaper. Once imaging work is completed, then the photos are e-mailed to the newspaper for publication in the next day's edition. This is just one example of how these newspaper cutbacks work.

If newspaper duties are being outsourced and remaining staff members are filling multiple roles (all from their cars), then why are newspapers hanging on to these relics known as newspaper offices and printing presses? The modern newsroom is in someone's bedroom where there is high-speed Internet access and adequate cellular phone service. Blogs and Twitter postings are now scooping newspapers. Read all about that here. What is there to stop someone with a wealth of resources and contacts from publishing his or her own news sites that can give the local newspaper a run for its money? The answer? Absolutely nothing.

As newspapers eliminate more staff and still try to maintain hard copy editions, the most visible result is that wire stories are now all over that publication left at your front door. This entire week, I've been reviewing all the news stories printed in section A of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Thus far, 75 percent of the news stories printed this week have not come from Herald-Leader reporters. Instead the bylines show that the majority of the actual news stories (not opinions and commentary) are being written by reporters with McClatchy Newspapers, The Associated Press and The New York Times News Service. When I wrote for Ohio University's independent student-operated daily newspaper, The Post, for four years, I attended several meetings of the editors where we were told that the amount of wire stories should never outnumber the amount of staff-written copy in one edition of the newspaper.

The most successful Internet news sites (such as Google News) are really wire services, if you give this serious thought. They contain stories from all over the world, written by a wide variety of sources. Whether you're talking about a well-respected veteran such as the BBC, or a more recent Internet-only publication such as The Huffington Post, it is very apparent that print publications can no longer say they fill a niche that can't be filled by anyone else. These online news sites are just as important as print icons such as The Washington Post and The New York Times. During President Obama's first news conference the other evening, he only took questions from 13 reporters. Guess where one of those reporters works. The Huffington Post.

The point is that the best online news sites already act as wire services anyway, and that these newspapers who keeping cutting staff are now running wire stories as the majority of their content anyway. It may not happen this year or next year, but eventually major metropolitan newspapers will stop printing hard copy editions completely. What's left will be a Web site with a skeleton crew of editors, designers, reporters and photographers. They will all be multi-taskers who just managed to survive all the rounds of layoffs. Will it really be necessary for these newspapers to maintain their own Web sites, since these newspapers will no longer truly exist as paper products. Seriously, will you even be able to call them newspapers anymore? They will be news sources that are part of a much larger NEWS INDUSTRY.

I see a day when there will be Web sites such as McClatchyNewsService.com, and readers who go there will be able to personalize the first page they come to by typing in a zip code or some other information that specifies the kind of news they want. If a visitor to the site wants news about a specific city, then they will be able read stories written by "local correspondents" who once worked for that city's McClatchy-owned newspaper. I suppose there might still be local news service offices, but those local correspondents wouldn't really need them thanks to wireless technology.

Many questions remain, though. What will become of those huge newspaper offices scattered throughout downtowns in this nation of ours? Who will compile information about announcements such as engagements, weddings and anniversaries, and where will you be able to see those announcements? Who will collect obituaries and where will people be able to read them when newspapers became part of larger wire services with centralized Web homes? Finally, can these newly centralized wire services with former reporters turned local correspondents actually make money off advertising? Where will all the coupons that fill Sunday papers wind up?

Special Report Part 1: Newspapers lost at sea with iTunes idea; Google News gets it right

At some point in the not so distant future, metropolitan newspapers across the country will no longer operate in giant complexes with printing press crews and delivery carriers. Instead, former newspaper reporters will serve as local correspondents for international wire services, with their articles showing up on Web sites where readers personalize the content based on their location. Here's part one of why this is the only option newspapers have left.

When there is breaking news and major developments in ongoing stories, people turn to news talk radio, television news networks and the many news services on the Internet. People want the latest information. Printing presses have already churned out the day's newspapers in the early morning hours. So, with a few exceptions where special editions came out, huge news events do not appear in hard copy form until the following day. That is too late, because we need to know the latest right now. Do the majority of newspapers turn to their Web sites and start posting continual updates with the latest photos, video, audio and accurate stories? Not really. Instead, radio, television and other Internet news sites take care of that.

For quite some time, newspapers were slow to embrace the Web, still thinking their industry occupied a special role in how people obtained news. Newspapers assumed they still provided a product people could get no where else, and that readers would remain loyal. My old editor always said, "Never assume anything." He was right. This post on the outstanding blog Recovering Journalist further explains the newspaper industry's long history of neglecting the online opportunities.

Now newspapers are realizing they must embrace the Web. It's the industry's last chance for survival. Unfortunately, the powers that manage the industry and who now find themselves searching for solutions are still completely misjudging the real situation. The real situation is that news consumers (you, me, us) have more options than we've ever had before for obtaining the news that interests us. Newspapers no longer provide stories or information we can't get anywhere else. Instead, newspapers are simply one part of a much larger news industry, where the leaders are those services and publications with sophisticated Web sites. 

That is why the latest idea to save the industry -- create an iTunes-like system where readers pay for every single online newspaper story  -- will never work. Some publications such as the newspaper where I worked from 2001 to 2004 (the Georgetown News-Graphic)  already require visitors to pay for an online subscription in order to read any news story posted on the Web. This tactic is not working. Just a week ago, my former employer announced that it is reducing the number of days per week it publishes (from six to three), eliminating its newspaper carriers and severely reducing its newsroom staff. To read more about why this iTunes idea will never succeed, check out this commentary written by Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate magazine.

One of the biggest online news success stories, if not THE biggest, is Google News. This is the business model all future online news services will turn to for guidance. Google News allows visitors to create personalize pages featuring the news, weather, pictures, audio and video content they most care about. Whenever readers visit their personalized Google News page, they find the most up-to-date coverage available on the Web. For more on how Google is changing everything, watch this PowerPoint presentation. Its creator is Jeff Jarvis, leader of the Buzz Machine blog and author of the new book What Would Google Do?

To be continued Thursday . . .

New York Times presents ways to save industry; petition calls for newspapers to lock out readers

Today's edition of The New York Times presents "Battle Plans for Newspapers," which begins with a succinct summary of the big industry changes coming in the following months and then includes the perspectives of the following people: Nicholas Lemann, dean of Columbia Journalism School; Joel Kramer, editor of MinnPost.com; Steven Brill, founder of The American Lawyer magazine; Geneva Overholser, Annenberg School of Journalism; Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist.org; author Andrew Keen; Edward M. Fouhy, founding editor of Stateline.org; and Rick Rodriguez, former editor of The Sacramento Bee.

Out of all the strategies presented in the Times article, Lemann's is closest to the strategy Scooping the News will introduce in a special report tomorrow on this blog and on our Web site. In what he calls a "pure business strategy", Lemann suggests "enlisting the help of outsiders. Nonprofit organizations like ProPublica, for example, have started to provide free content to newspapers on subjects they care about. Alternatively, the gap in independent reporting on matters of public importance left by ailing newspapers could be filled by other organizations. They might be new, Web-based news services."

Instead of working on ways to save the industry and making those changes immediately, one writer is circulating a petition to lock out all non-paying visitors of newspaper Web sites for one week.

"Therefore, we the undersigned do respectfully request that the owners and operators of each and every daily American newspaper and The Associated Press shut down their Web sites to non-paying subscribers for a period of one week -- from Saturday July 4 to Friday July 10, 2009 -- and during such time publish news only in print, or behind existing, password-protected Internet barriers accessible only by paying subscribers," states the petition. To read more about the reasons behind this petition, click here.

Scooping the News will NOT be signing the petition.

Kindle 2 delivers newspaper, reads stories to you

When Amazon unveiled the latest version of its portable electronic reader today, the newspaper industry glimpsed further into its future. The Kindle 2 will retail at $359, ship out Feb .24, automatically deliver your newspaper and even read the stories to you.

"Magazines and newspaper subscriptions are auto-delivered wirelessly to Kindle overnight so that the latest edition is waiting for customers when they wake up. Monthly Kindle newspaper subscriptions are $5.99 to $14.99 per month, and Kindle magazines are $1.25 to $3.49 per month," states Amazon's news release.

"Pages turn automatically while the content is being read so customers can listen hands-free. Customers can choose to be read to by male or female voices and can choose the speed to suit their listening preference. Using the read-to-me feature, anything you can read on Kindle, including books, newspapers, magazines, blogs, and personal documents, Kindle 2 can read to you," continues the news release.

Is there any doubt now that newspapers will stop using printing presses and only publish electronically? Will the majority of U.S. newspaper readers still want to read a hard copy of a newspaper when they can have a Kindle read it to them? More newspapers announce each day that they are reducing the number of days they publish hard copies. Editor's Note: My former employer, the Georgetown News-Graphic, made such an announcement last weekend.

Technology Saturday: Learn about Twitter, Kindle

Newspapers survived the introductions of radio and television but then came the Internet. As they now say in the business, technology changed everything. As newspapers continue to expand their Web sites, even newer technology such as iPhones and Kindles demand that newspapers keep evolving. 

One result of such newer technology is that newspapers now allow readers to subscribe for online alerts geared specifically toward subjects interesting the individual. Whenever there is breaking news in that area (sports, politics, government, crime, etc.), readers then get brief alerts, sometimes with links to actual stories, sent to their e-mail accounts and cell phones.

Now there is a new tool for instant communication known simply as Twitter. You might have seen Twitter mentioned on blogs or heard it being discussed at work or in crowded restaurants. The idea is that using a cell phone or a computer, individuals or groups are supposed to answer the question "What are you doing?" in 140 words or less. The answer is then posted online for people to see.

Twitter is already becoming a commercial phenomenon whether you've heard about it or not. And, why it began primarily as a social networking tool, there is already evidence that it may become a part of companies' ways of communicating with customers. "Another idea is to charge companies for corporate accounts that offer extra tools to connect with customers and to monitor what people are saying about products, the good and the bad," writes Verne Kopytoff of the San Francisco Chronicle. Click here to read more. Also, click here to see an example of a celebrity's Web site where Twitter is used.

In other technology news, Amazon is set to unveil the second version of its portable electronic reading device named the Kindle on Monday, and the first version is already becoming a hit despite its $300 retail price. If you don't own ones of these devices, you've never seen one, or you've never heard of e-readers, then watch the video below. It is by far the finest introduction to such technology.

Newspaper reporters must connect with readers

Much of the blame for today's failing newspaper industry is placed on two factors -- declining circulation and advertising figures. Those reasons are typically dished out by newspaper executives who are trying to justify and explain the latest round of job cuts they hope to make through "attrition". These newspaper executives are blind to the real reason why blogs and Internet-only publications are thriving -- interaction between readers and writers. There is rarely any two-way dialogue between reporters and readers. It's a shame because many readers are well-informed citizens who sometimes break news on their own blogs and Web sites. It's as if some, NOT ALL, reporters still fashion themselves as the only ones presenting the news. Until that last paycheck arrives anyway.

We live in a completely interactive society now; e-mails, text messages, blogs, iPhones, etc. all make constant back-and-forth communication a reality. The companies dishing out this new technology are seeing signs of profit in an economy where profit is rare. Yet, newspapers are struggling and the popular idea of the week (thanks to TIME and The New York Times) is to start charging readers for everything. When the ship is sinking, you want to charge the sailors so they can stay on board?

What needs to happen is a completely new vision for how to distribute the news and attract new readership. In terms of distribution, the answer is fairly simple: Printing presses are obsolete in this electronic age, and the majority of readers prefer getting their news electronically. One newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, figured this out and is on the verge of going primarily electronic. E-readers are taking off, and they are gaining in popularity so much that Amazon is set to debut it's new Kindle Monday. Read more about that here.

There are plenty of excellent commentaries on the Web echoing my sentiments. Herb Denenberg, of the Philadelphia paper no one knows about -- The Bulletin, writes, "It’s bad enough that these mainstream media seem to be at war with their readers and buyers. What might be worse is that they don’t seem to care. . . . Newspapers that are out of touch with their readers are doomed to extinction, which might be another in the long list of forces driving mainstream newspapers into extinction." Read more here.

I recently suggested to a room full of current and former journalists that newspaper reporters need to start interacting with readers on the comments pages of newspaper Web sites. When readers post comments about a story, you need to know that the reporter is actually a real person in touch with his or her readers. That can be accomplished by the reporter responding to comments out in the open on the comments page. One former journalist commented that reporters just don't have enough time to do that.

In a column on the Web site OJR, Robert Niles demands that newspapers wake up and start interacting with readers. He calls for reporters to engage readers on comments pages: "A website needs great engagement with its readers. And engagement with the public is something that's been budgeted out of too many newsrooms over the past generation. It's time to bring that back. It's time to do that online. And if a beloved label needs to be sacrificed to inspire the innovation that will enable this effort, so be it. It's time for the 'newspaper' industry to die. Because we all need the news industry to survive." Click here to read more.

Finally, Steve Volk of Philadelphia Magazine suggests how a modern news operation might work: "Well, if a start-up could afford a couple of web designers and nine reporters, it could cover the city’s four major sports teams, police, local and national politics, music and restaurants. It could also invite citizens to join in, enabling them to post their own stories and photos about neighborhood developments, school board meetings, whatever strikes their fancy. And who knows? As the enterprise grows, it might even hire some of them. This is, needless to say, pure conjecture. But these solutions are, like the Internet, founded on the same egalitarian principles journalists love to espouse. In essentially placing readers right there in the room with journalists, they are also a threat to every reporter’s ego, and the old idea of authoritativeness that the daily paper traditionally represents." Read his full column here.

One Seattle daily paper braces for the worst; the city's other daily gets rejected by Hearst

Hearst Newspapers made it clear today that they will not purchase the Seattle Times, reports Dan Richman of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Meanwhile, a group called The Committee for a Two-Newspaper Town is calling for a community effort to buy the P-I, reports The Associated Press.

Hearst Newspapers announced Jan. 9 that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer was for sale, and that no agreement to purchase would result in the end of a printed newspaper and either a Web-only edition or no edition at all within 60 days.

Much like other two-newspaper cities -- Chicago and Detroit being two other ones -- Seattle is seeing both of its daily newspapers, the P-I and the Seattle Times facing severe financial hardships.

Newspaper strikes gold with online advertising

Newspapers long neglected the Internet before finally realizing that the shifting currents of mass communication technology meant people preferred cheap, convenient and constantly updated news sources. More than 10 years since the Internet hit the big time, newspapers find themselves cutting staff, eliminating print editions, filing for bankruptcy protection, and even closing their doors in some cases.

One newspaper -- The Gettysburg Times in Pennsylvania -- has figured out one of the solutions to solving the newspaper industry's problems. The solution is a simple one: Online Web sites attract hundreds of thousands of visitors monthly, so why not use modern technology to create advertisements that will lure companies to pay for space on these very same Web sites. It's a win-win situation for both sides. Advertisers can reach large audiences, and newspapers can make money off advertising which was always newspaper's main source of revenue anyway. The main source of revenue was never circulation.

“Newspapers like ours have found that Internet advertising has been one source of revenue that has actually risen over the past several years and most forecasts for 2009 agree that the trend will continue,” says Times Director of Operations Tom Ford, in a story written by B.J. Small of The Gettysburg Times. “The Times website draws a tremendous amount of visitors. . . . During the most recent year of 2008, the newspaper website averaged 123,839 visitors monthly – generating 725,323 page views! This is a great way for advertisers to reach a large audience for a small price.”

Some newspapers -- The New York Times, to name a major one -- are still trying to figure out what The Gettysburg Times already knows. "New York Times Co. may charge for access to its flagship newspaper’s Web site less than two years after terminating an earlier online-subscription service. The company is studying whether to start charging for all or some of the content on nytimes.com, as well as other options, Bill Keller said in an online question-and-answer session. Most of the site is free," reports Greg Bensinger of Bloomberg.