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Anderson, Bezos, O'Reilly talk newspapers

By Alex Goldman on June 21, 2009 9:19 AM

NEW YORK -- As newspapers appear to be dying, some believe they will survive while others are ready to nationalize journalism or form cooperatives.

But some are not eager to talk about the subject of newspapers. At Wired's Disruptive by Design conference here this week, Chris Anderson, prophet of free and a Wired editor, said, when asked, "the bane of my existence this year will be the question about whether newspapers should be free or not."

He added that rather than choosing between free and paid, the industry will offer some pieces for free and others for more in a freemium model that's increasingly popular in the tech industry.

He said that sites cannot charge for exclusives, as that content will be replicated elsewhere, and that sites should not charge for their most popular content, because that content can be supported by ads. Instead, the "long tail" guru said that newspapers should be able to charge for niche content.

"A specific business interest or community will pay for content and will be almost price insensitive in an inversion of the old blockbuster model," he said.

"The smaller the niche, the better," he added.

The view from the Web

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, identified several difficult problems. "A recession took a bad situation and made it worse," he said at the conference. "The biggest structural problem is that now there's so much supply of ad space. The blogosphere has made it very easy now. You used to need an advertising sales force and you don't need it now. You used to need a distribution mechanism -- some of the most important barriers to entry have been dissolved permanently and that is not going to change."

He added that some newspapers that have global brands, such as The New York Times, will be able to appeal to a global audience. "Premium properties will have opportunities once they cross through what will be a difficult transition period," he said.

He added that e-books like the Kindle would be part of the future of the newspaper business.

This week at Jeff Pulver's 140 Characters conference, Tim O'Reilly said that the survival of newspapers, like that of all publishers, would depend upon identifying and serving a community.

Of course, the Internet is changing the publishing industry too, with a deal announced between Simon & Schuster and Scribd to deliver books online, but journalism is changing faster because its business model is in real trouble.

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