The future of the online newspaper

Kevin Drum and Ezra Klein, combined with my own professional interest on the matter and riffing on Ted Rall

First, to those who would claim that Internet ads have such high penetration rates, or similar, I say that technology has empowered we the "Net consumers," so that we have the power to "not see ads."

Example: I have Firefox on a PC. Between Firefox’s ad block, my extensive list of URLs on my hosts file and Firefox’s No Script to block videos from launching I simply do not see most ads.

That's a far physical difference from a hard-copy newspaper. Even if you know the ads are all “down there” on the bottom half, or bottom two-thirds, of the page, they at least partially catch your eye.

Heck, even with junk mail, it may catch the corner of my eye for five seconds.

Second is the atomization of news brought on by the Net. How likely is Poltico, Ezra’s focal point for his post, of even staying about water after the November election? Until recently, the major daily newspapers could charge such high ad rates because they had such large readerships.

Combine the two factors — relatively low readership of many online sites and the ability to dodge ads, and I can’t see that the present model is highly viable.

If you’re a specialized online news magazine, the obvious solution is a subscription model. And, a subscription model might be tweakable to defeat host files, or cookie-deniers or whatever, and force people to eyeball ads.

For the old hardcopy paper or mag? To me, the Guardian solution — not only being private, but being run by an official nonprofit — may be the way to go. It would reduce the focus on the bottom line, and it would also get financial speculators, the Sam Zells of the world, out of the business of buying newspapers.