Can newspapers save themselves?

First of all, despite claims to the contrary, Internet advertising is NOT very likely going to save newspapers. Not anytime soon.

My analogy is that Internet advertising is like the Red River in West Texas in summer – it’s a mile wide but only an inch deep.

Here’s the bottom line.

The failure is ultimately trying to apply a hardcopy business model to the Net. Papers, and mags, HAVE TO, even if the barn doors are already open, start charging for online content. Ads alone, in the online world, WILL NOT make a paper profitable.

Walter Isaacson says microcontent sales are the ticket, unaware that that’s already doable, and showing that Isaacson himself doesn’t have an answer.

Even readers of small dailies, semiweeklies and weeklies have gotten used to getting stories for free, off the Net.

The AP is going to have to revisit contracts with Google, Yahoo, etc., especially with Google selling its own ads on newspaper-linked stories now. It’s that simple.

Some non-dailies have pretty good websites, and I don’t just mean metropolitan alt-weeklies. And they sell ads well. Many other papers don’t. Even people at my level of newspapers demand more and more free content all the time.