Radio Struggles as Advertisers Tune Out

(USER SUBMITTED) - Here's one way to solve the dearth of advertising for newspapers—just get rid of that pesky stuff altogether and charge readers an extra $5 an issue. This is what the Chicago Tribune may be planning, according to a story in the Chicago Reader, which got its hands on an ad-free dummy copy of the new paper. More»

(NEWSER) - In the avalanche of reporting and commentary on the collapse of the newspaper business, a number of salient, none-too-flattering facts have been overlooked about how newspapers contributed to their own demise, Bill Wyman writes on Splice. First, there's the misunderstanding that readers pay for news. It's advertisers who pay, and in the boom years, rich profits from that advertising were devoted to pleasing Wall Street, not preparing for inevitable threats to the papers' monopoly in delivering those ads. More»

Automated advertising plan not music to industry's ears

(NEWSER) - Google has hit a stumbling block in its quest for world domination: A bid to “conquer radio” with its advertising program didn’t go as planned, and the firm is dropping the effort at the end of the month, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Internet giant bet its automated model could revolutionize the radio-advertising market—but stations and advertisers were less enthusiastic. More»

(NEWSER) - Google CEO Eric Schmidt's proposed model for online newspapers calls for a cable TV-like approach to subscription content, with tiers like free, basic, and premium. His ideas not only come too late, but they're “deeply flawed,” Douglas A. McIntyre writes for 24/7 Wall Street. And "even if they were valuable, they come too late in the cycle of destruction that marks the end of the financial viability of newspapers." More»

Collusion could avert disaster—but it won't happen

(NEWSER) - The newspaper industry is in dire straits, and to fix it, its bosses must “hold hands and jump off the following cliffs together,” writes David Carr in the New York Times. First, end free web access; it will drive away some readers, but they're not paying for quality reporting anyway. Second, aggregators like Google and Newser shouldn’t get a “free ride”—though that could mean angering the search king. More»