Tell Hetrick

So along comes another media “expert” saying that newspapers are dying because people don’t want to pay for content. Read it here.

But newspapers are dying because many of the people in charge of them haven’t accepted that they need to change their thinking.

Publications have traditionally made their money from three sources: newsstand sales, subscription sales and advertising (definitely not in that order). Predictors of the demise of newspapers say that the loss of ad revenue means newspapers can’t afford to stay in business; the three-legged stool will fall over.

So maybe it’s time to build a new third leg, one that replaces advertising revenue with paying-for-content revenue.

The New York Times, for example, e-mails me a list of the week’s travel articles every Friday—for free. I can open an article I’m interested in and read it—for free. I can print it, send it to a friend, comment on it, forward it to my phone—all for free.

Newspapers are trying to support this service by selling online ads. But do you ever look at those ads? I sure don’t. And advertisers know it.

Instead, let’s say the Times sends me that list, but asks me to pay for each article I want to read. I’m not making a trip to Laos or Uruguay anytime soon, so I ignore those stories, but I do want the Times’ tips on pubs in a Sydney neighborhood, what’s going on with airfare to Europe, where to see live volcanoes, and how to protect my credit cards when I travel. If I were asked to pay 50 cents or so to “buy” each of those articles, I’d happily do so. (Just like I pay 99 cents for a song on iTunes.) And when I do actually make that trip to Australia, I’ll pay for access to the Times archives on that country, too.

Even with circulation on the decline, the Times still reaches well over a million paying customers every day—and that’s just the print edition. The Times itself estimates that at least that many people are also reading it online—for free. If the Times convinced just 1 percent of those 2 million readers to pay 50 cents for just one article, the Times would earn $10,000 that day per article. And the Times produces hundreds of stories every day. To read articles that interest me, I might wind up spending spending five or 10 bucks a month for content produced by some of the world’s best reporters, photographers and editors. That sounds like a bargain to me—and represents much more income than the Times sees from me now.

Likewise, I’d pay to read my local newspapers’ take on local subjects, a business paper’s articles concerning my industry, and maybe my college paper’s front page.

Am I the only one?