I read David Lazarus’s column yesterday and immediately wanted to fisk it, but I had some real work to do and never got to it. Fortunately, Michael Bazeley is on the job and has the appropriate takedown of Lazarus’s complete misconception of the online news business.
Repeat after me: People do not pay for news in print. They pay for delivery.
Readers have never paid for newspaper content and they’re not going to start now that they know our delivery costs are almost nil.
People pay for perceived value. Delivery of content has value. If there are free alternatives, well then there starts the problem for the newspaper industry. Advertisers will go where the eyes are – then the revenue model starts unraveling quickly.
The good news for local communities is that online alternatives will bring back news services focus on localities as the cost of serving them drops.
[…] David Lazarus apparently hasn’t gotten the message: […]