Guardian Axes American Website After 2 Years

Only 'experiences,' not content, can save the news: Jenkins

(NEWSER) - Suddenly every newspaper is talking about a Journal-style online paywall or a "freemium" subscription model, but Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins is resigned that "stunned and traumatized" papers are on their way out. Instead of paywalls, Papers should learn from the battered music industry, which has used "the long-tail economics of live enterprise" to fund hard-to-sell content. Newspapers' brands are still viable, even if their finances have collapsed. More»

Disgruntled staffers told few have ventured behind paywall

(NEWSER) - Three months after Newsday erected a paywall around its revamped $4 million web site, only 35 people have paid the $5 a week needed to breach it. Publisher Terry Jiminez revealed the figure at a heated newsroom meeting last week, insiders tell the New York Observer . Jiminez stressed that most visitors already had free access to the site via either their newspaper or their cable subscriptions, adding: "That's 35 more than I thought it would have been." More»

Corporate interests, internet advertising crippling industry

(NEWSER) - The media's troubles mean that "this country is in trouble," writes Dan Rather, and no academic study or think-tank report is going to save the industry. We need no less than a “nonpartisan, blue-ribbon” presidential commission “to address the perilous state of America’s news media,” and make recommendations as to how to fix it, he suggests in a Washington Post op-ed. More»

(NEWSER) - As newspapers hemorrhage cash, the refrain is getting louder: the Web is sucking away their audiences and can never replicate the serious journalism they offer. The argument sounds familiar, Jack Shafer writes for Slate: It’s the one newspapers used against radio 80 years ago. Radio was then seen as the death of print, delivering reports instantly and allegedly cheapening the “sacred rhetoric” of written journalism. More»

(NEWSER) - The British media group that publishes the Guardian is considering closing its sister Sunday paper, the Observer, which has been in print since 1791. The Guardian Media Group reported a pre-tax annual loss of nearly $150 million. Possible futures for the Observer include an Observer-branded magazine. It's "50/50 whether we are headed for the magazine, or for cuts but keeping the paper," said a source. More»