Comments on: David Simon is wrong about the news

By: acm

acm — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 18:52:55 +0000

I certainly wouldn't pay my local paper for online access to its crappier version of what top international papers do with worldwide coverage. but I would pay both local papers for access to their local coverage online -- in fact, I'm totally reliant on their expertise for local news, but am unwilling to subscribe to even one daily paper (with its deluge of high-level crap), let alone two...

there should be a way to make this work, keeping the locals alive for precisely what they do best. certainly, the inaccessability of their archives is something that should be addressed!

By: Rafe

Rafe — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:57:40 +0000

That’s certainly the “long tail” approach to the problem.

By: daveadams

daveadams — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:13:56 +0000

I'd think there's tons to be made via advertising on old content. These papers and magazines with 100+ years of content in their archives are sitting on an immensely valuable resource that really should be made available publicly. I think they could make enough off the ad sales to pay for the data entry, and maybe hire an archive-blogger to link to the truly interesting stories from over the years as things are converted.

Of course, 12-13 years ago web advertising was not so clearly valuable as it has become. I don't think newspapers have lost the game yet. There's still time to become locally relevant before Google or Yahoo come up with some truly compelling local content. That's an area where I, living in small markets for most of the Internet area, see a huge opportunity for growth.