Time and NY Times weigh in on newspapers

A couple more interesting reads out there on the future of newspapers. Both advocate for some sort of pay-per-view model for online news, arguing that advertising is not enough to generate the quality or quantity of news content we need.

The firrst, from Time Magazine, says there's some hope in a future "micropayment" system where, like we've become accustomed to paying $0.99 for a song on iTunes, we'll someday pay a couple pennies for each news story we read on iNews (or, more likely, each news source's Web platform):

Under a micropayment system, a newspaper might decide to charge a nickel for an article or a dime for that day's full edition or $2 for a month's worth of Web access. Some surfers would balk, but I suspect most would merrily click through if it were cheap and easy enough.

In the NY Times, David Carr advocates for something similar. He also points out that the traditional regulations that have prevented newspaper mergers in a single market are outdated and have prevented some necessary consolidation. I'd like to add that antitrust laws keeping newspapers and TV stations from merging are also too old-fashioned, at some point they're both going to be doing the same thing on the Web, so we might as well get them working together now. The traditional barriers are meaningless, and meanwhile the old stalwarts are crumbling. Here's the money quote from newspaper analyst John Morton:

“Only newspapers are economically organized to cover a broad swath of events,” he said. “A lot of aggregators have been taking advantage of that, and pretty soon, there will be nothing to aggregate. But that can’t really be discussed among newspaper owners because of antitrust problems.”

Clearly, newspapers have done a lot to get themselves in this hole. But outdated regulations shouldn't be making the problem worse.

More on newspapers

I happened upon this essay, originally from The New Republic, this morning when I was reading the recap of last night's Kings game on The Sacramento Bee's Web site. The author, Princeton Professor Paul Starr, does a good job summarizing the current state of newspapers and analyzing their importance to the public. I thought it was interesting he referred to news as a "public good" here:

Public goods are notoriously underproduced in the marketplace, and news is a public good – and yet, since the mid-19th century, newspapers have produced news in abundance at a cheap price to readers and without need of direct subsidy.

Public goods usually are something you want the government to subsidize, since the market is not producing the optimal amount on its own. I expected Starr to follow with some proposal for the government to subsidize newspapers, which, thankfully, he didn't. Not every paper can be BBC or NPR, and the idea of the watchdog having a tie to the government makes me nervous.

Taking a step back, the fact that I even stumbled upon this story shows that reading news on the Web isn't all bad. Many have cited the "serendipity" that print newspapers allow--the stories that you wouldn't go out of your way to read, but are happy you found--and lamented that there is no such parallel online. But that's not necessarily true, as I found out this morning.

Where is CJ Craig when you need her?

Today, I went to my first politics-related press conference. I've been to press conferences before here, but this was at the Casa Presidencial, or the Costa Rican equivalent of the White House. The president wasn't there, but the Presidency Minister (still not sure what that means, exactly) as well as a few other ministers were on hand to talk about the economy. At least, I think that's what they were talking about...

In many ways, the press room at the Casa Pres reminds me of Kresge Auditorium, a lecture hall back at Stanford, but on a smaller scale. The set up is almost exactly the same--podium up front, stadium seats ascending away from the stage, and the huge windows on the side walls that allow you to daydream and gaze at the palm trees outside. Also, exactly like a group of college students (and unlike the White House) the press corps fill all the back rows first, only very reluctantly taking the risk of sitting up front. Fake plants adorn the stage, highlighted by green and orange accent lights--something Kresge could probably use back at Stanford to liven up those econ lectures.

As the press conference begins, I struggle to keep up. The ministers refer to several events that took place in the country before I arrived, and, without the context, following along is difficult. The rapid-fire Spanish compounds the problem. To top it off, however, several cell phones go off during the conference--and the reporters have the gall to answer them and carry on a conversation! This would never happen in a Stanford class, much less in the White House!

I hear that such occurances are actually common. In fact, a co-worker told me a story involving a doctor who answered his phone while performing surgery. So, those of you who were contemplating it, it may be time to reconsider the whole medical tourism idea.