Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Baltimore Sun: Newspapers need to 'do it different' on getting paid

From the Baltimore Sun's Jay Hancock:

"The problem isn't the journalism; soaring Web readership proves that. The problem is getting paid for it in the Internet Age."

Comment: A much more reasonable perspective on the topic than other recent commentary.

Update: The AP wasn't too thrilled by Hancock's column. Among other points of dispute, the AP says that "a very small fraction of this content -- less than 4 percent -- is contributed from AP-member newspapers. The overwhelming majority of content sold to commercial, nonmember Web sites is original content produced by AP staff." Considering the ratio of AP to locally-produced content in most newspapers these days, I tend to believe them on this.