Saving newspapers →

Fred Clark examines Walter Isaacson’s recent Time cover story:

His big solution, in short, is that somebody needs to invent some kind of convenient micropayment system that would allow newspapers to charge for the online content we’re currently giving away for free. Web advertising, Isaacson figures, will never produce sufficient revenue to cover the cost of producing all that free content.

Well, maybe that would help. Partly. Perhaps. Although I’m far from convinced that newspapers are really suffering from a problem of insufficient revenue as much as they are from a problem of foolishly inappropriate revenue expectations.

Oh yes all that, and then the added problem of any such magical micropayment system breaking the freaking Internet. As in, suddenly an entire class of Web pages are available only to users with Web browsers and operating systems blessed by content providers. It would be like the old browser wars all over again, except that anyone using a minority Web browser or operating system will be left out in the cold. A good rule of thumb: if you’re considering a Web policy that will lock some users out, it’s a bad idea. Don’t do it.

But I agree with Fred that newspapers are dying and there’s little we can do to prevent that. What we need to do, somehow, is figure out how to preserve the best qualities of newspapers in this new media world.