Anyway, there’s a couple of articles worth pointing out – one on newsroom/online convergence and another on online paid content.

They’re by two guys I know and respect, and you should too, as they deal/have dealt with these issues for longer than anyone.

First up is Steve Yelvington, one of the deep thinkers at Morris Communications, where I used to work.  Steve pulled together a report on newsroom/online convergence that everyone should read.

And with his expertise, he was able to solicit a lot of comments from all over the globe and from both sides of the fence.

Quote: “Culture gaps are deep, persistent, and troublesome. The union of online and print units brings together people with very different points of view about how to do journalism. Expect conflict. “We had huge respect issues, on both sides,” recalled one senior editor. “Online producers felt the newsroom had no idea what they did. And the newsroom felt online had no knowledge of journalism.” The result was suspicion and hostility. ‘There were no saints on either side.’”

Following that is a post by Neil Budde of DailyMe. He’s also the former vice president and editor of Yahoo! News, and for reasons for this post, the founding editor/publisher of The Wall Street Journal Online.

Neil includes some interesting links you should follow up on to his post on paid content and how and why they did it at the Journal.

Quote: To understand the success of the WSJ subscription model and contemplate what other information-based products might merit a fee, I think you first have to explode another “myth” about WSJ.com. I think it’s commonly assumed that we conceptualized, designed and built The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition (as we called it during development in 1994-95 and at its launch in 1996) and then decided to charge for it. Quite the opposite was true. We began with the premise that we wanted to build a “product” that would have sufficient value that people would pay for it.

Read the rest here.

And now I’ve said it. And it sucks saying it because it was my life for roughly a quarter of a century.

I’m afraid the only thing  keeping print versions alive right now  is habit. It’s what you’ve always done, what you’ve always known. It’s a comfort zone.

And you know, a habit is basically an addiction. And addictions can be expensive, but they can also be broken.  And it’s a lot easier to break an addiction if you can keep your addiction, and suddenly get it for “free.”

Damn, somehow I brought in that whole paid verses free online content thing again, didn’t I?

I love newspapers. And with that I want to point out the English language is simply lacking in adequately descriptive words. The word “love” should be reserved for, well, poems and songs and significant others, like the Little Black Dress. And yeah, newspapers, but the LBD understands that.

But adulation, affection, allegiance, amity, amorousness, amour, appreciation, ardency, ardor, attachment, crush, delight, devotedness, devotion. enchantment, enjoyment, fervor, fidelity, flame, fondness, friendship, hankering, idolatry, inclination, infatuation, involvement, like, lust, mad for, partiality, passion, piety, rapture, regard, relish, respect, sentiment, soft spot, taste, tenderness, weakness, worship, yearning and zeal don’t quite get it.

Change that. “Passion” does. So does “Zeal.”

Anyway, why do I “love” print newspapers.

1. They’re cheap.

2. Absurdly portable

3. No boot-up time

4. No crash

5. Airport Security. Nuff said.

6. Throw it down, stomp on it, dust it off and back to square one.

7. Okay yes, bird cages and puppy training and packing up Aunt Emma’s old china.  Happy?

8. Because the people who write for print newspapers have a passion, a zeal, a love, for what they do. They are underpaid, overworked (okay, that applies to everyone now), and yet they still care.

9.  It’s a one-shot deal. It’s printed, it’s done. Tomorrow’s another day. We rip the whole thing up and start all over. It’s a new day, every day.

10.  There is no No. 10. I friggin hate “Top 10″ lists.

And honestly, great print journalists have no fear. They might get nervous before a big interview, but they have no fear. They might get sick and throw up if there’s an error in their story, but they have no fear. They have a passion, a drive.

Yet that incredible product is going the way of the dinosaur, partly because it’s being given away for free, and partly because the product  is starting to lose its value.

The cost of a daily newspaper continues to go up. Yet its size continues to shrink and shrink. Not only are there fewer pages, but the width is shrinking as well.

And how about that customer service? Used to be the paper was delivered right at your doorstep. Now I have to hike all the way up my drive. Why? Heck, in some places you can’t even get a daily newspaper delivered any more – Detroit.

And what about content. By the time I read the newspaper, it’s literally old news. I’ve already read it online, or someone emailed me a story, or I got a text version, or something. Why should I pay for a newspaper I’ve already read?

We’re getting to the point where the print product is only a delivery mechanism for coupons.

Here’s how Jen of Editor and Publisher’s Fitz and Jen column summed it up: “Too many newspapers lately seemed preoccupied with getting people to pay for online content while treating those people who actually pay for the content via print subscriptions as second-class readers. How? They drop frequency. They kick home-delivery to the curb. They raise the price of subscriptions (and especially newsstand copies) and give less in return. For all the blubbering about hyper local, I’ve noticed a lack of focus in daily metros when I’m lucky enough to travel around the U.S. It’s full of AP and wire copy with a handful of “local” stories broken into digestible chunks with lots of pictures. I wouldn’t pay for that.

The print version needs to be, must be, unique. It has to have content not available elsewhere. It has to have value or it will simply become high-priced packing paper.

I ran a news service for five years, which included more than 30 papers.  During that time, I could count on two hands, okay and maybe one foot, how many times I touched a print newspaper.

Yet I was able to hold an intelligent conversation with any of those papers’ editors about what was going on in their community. That’s obviously a plug for the value of an online paper, but it doesn’t bode well for the print product.

Yep, the Wall Street Journal charges for its online subscription. God forbid.

There’s a lot of pontificating from “experts” who think all content should be free and who have  A). Never run a newspaper or been in a newsroom and B). Think the majority of “old media” don’t get “new media” and need to get out of the way. – The first point is self-explanatory. I’ll deal with the second in another post.

But Alan Mutter – Reflections of a Newsosaur - went straight to the source. He’s got a guest blog from Bill Grueskin, the former managing editor of WSJ.Com. This is what we call a guy who knows what he’s talking about and why. It’s actually two posts: first was today, second comes tomorrow. It’s very insightful. Read it.

Probably the greatest “paid content” quote ever – At the class, I turned to my co-instructor, Peter Kann, former CEO of Dow Jones and the person ultimately responsible for the paid strategy.
“I made the site paid because I was ignorant, “ Kann told the class. “I didn’t know any better. I just thought people should pay for content.”

Sometimes the simplest way is the best way.