Obviously, the publishing business – especially print – can’t support much of the old operational costs built in to production and distribution. It will take rigid monetization models (pay walls), innovative content and licensing alliances (e-Readers,etc) and better bridging of online and offline communities. That’s a tall order for most organizations because their business has been so dependent on ready-steady advertising for so many years. When Craigslist killed classifieds and the bottom fell out of the auto industry, well, you could predict the ramifications.
One potential business model that newspapers are exploring is charging a monthly fee to read a daily newspaper’s content online. This model, however, seems unlikely to work as three-quarters of online adults (77%) say they would not be willing to pay anything to read a newspaper’s content online. While some are willing to pay, one in five online adults (19%) would only pay between $1 and $10 a month for this online content and only 5% would pay more than $10 a month.
