=== The ongoing risk to society from the newspaper financial model disintegration is the loss of original reporting. ===

 Except that I don't think there is all that much original reporting going on these days.  The business section (and technology section where there is one) is primarily reprinting of senior executives' press releases, with 1 or 2 muckrakers/thumbsuckers per quarter.  Sports consists of rewritten press releases from the big players (ha ha), local summaries from underpaid or volunteer stringers, and lots of commentary (cheap).  International news is reprinted from AP at minimal cost, and is disappearing anyway.  Local news?  See business section above - mainly stenography from politicians and large real estate developers.

 That leaves national news and politics, but with what we have seen in the Armstrong Williams situation and PlameGate story it appears that the newspapers aren't doing all that much original reporting on those topics anyway.

 Which may explain why most of the remaining major papers are downsizing this quarter.

sPh 

"Which may explain why most of the remaining major papers are downsizing this quarter."

Nah.  They're downsizing because the internet is eating their bacon.

And while the situation you describe is true at the great numerical majority of papers, the handful of elite papers lead by the NYT are still doing a huge amount of original reporting every single day.

The financial storm hasn't fully hit the NYT yet, but it's hitting lots of other semi-elite papers that do lots of original reporting.  Look at the dilemma faced by a paper like the Philly Inquirer some time.

I think Kaus misses the most obvious reason why pay-for-service websites are unlike cable TV: nobody ever had the opportunity to access hundreds of high-quality free cable channels.

The internet land rush started during a uniquely utopian period in the history of capitalism, during which many otherwise sane people believed it was not only possible to make millions of dollars without ever producing a profitable product, but that anyone who failed to see the brilliance of this business model was a quaint relic of the mesozoic era.  As a result, nearly every newspaper and TV network in the free world launched a website full of free content, and nearly everyone who owned a computer and a phone line in the late 1990s became hooked on the free content.

Very few people are going to pay for premium internet content as long as it continues to be possible to get equally good content without paying for it.  Like smack-addicted rats, we're just going to keep hitting the feeder bar for our next fix until they take away the free goods.

However, there IS a functional business model  that can be used by online news providers, and it already exists in the world of scientific journals.  Publishers have joined one of several competing services such as ScienceDirect that provide unlimited access to a variety of different journals for an annual fee.  It seems likely to me that eventually the online news sites will band together into several rival "networks" that will charge for access.  However, the entire system of free online news reporting will have to collapse before this becomes a profitable venture.

I agree with Matt that the role of political bloggers will become simpler once this happens.  It will require less talent to draw an audience if all you need to do is summarize the content of various news agencies, but it will require more money to get started.  Communities such as this one, which can draw on a pool of well-connected volunteers and user donations to provide high-quality opinion journalism and original reporting, should become even more influential as time goes on.

=== And while the situation you describe is true at the great numerical majority of papers, the handful of elite papers lead by the NYT are still doing a huge amount of original reporting every single day. ===

 Respectfully I must beg to differ.  I can only really judge what I know about firsthand, which is science, technology, and business reporting.  In those areas there is nothing original and nothing honest being done:  it is all press release rewrites and concerned party spin.

So, that leads me to view the "original" reporting in other areas with a skeptical eye.  When we look at WMD and PlameGate specifically, we find that what was billed as original reporting was no such thing:  it was all stenography.  Unsourced stenography.

If that is true of one of most critical stories of the last 50 years (WMD; Iraq invasion) what evidence do you have that original reporting is going on in any other area?

sPh
 

Cable TV has another advantage the Web can't match: without it these days, it's hard to get reception in many areas for free TV.

.....what evidence do you have that original reporting is going on in any other area?

I can read the news reporting done on almost any story in a variety of newspapers, but using Google News, which I do. What I find is that virtually all stories about an event are identical. It appears that the original reporter who writes about something, like Congressman Cunningham's crimes has his story copied by every other news paper in the world. So, I would say that very little original reporting in any area is being done.

An interesting bit of evidence on this is the White House daily news briefing. In that briefing you can see reporters grilling Scotty, challenging his statements, and asking some pretty good questions. But, almost never do you see any news story based upon those challenges and questions.

My impression is that the news services, like AP and Reuters, are the sole place where original reporting takes place, and most of that is rewrites of news releases. Local news is another story, but national news doesn't have reporting as we understand it being done.

What's moving from the papers to the web is not the reporting - it's the business model.  Classified ads have long been the bread and butter of local papers, but eBay and Craigslist are killing that.

I don't disagree with your statement above petey.  But the print media's financial health isn't solely contingent on classifieds.  They have taken a big hit from the web on the classified end of it and now they are starting to get beat on the hard news end of it too.  That isn't a good business "daily double".

As Matthew's post notes, sites like this do not do original reporting.  They sift and filter the original reporting done by a handful of newspapers and media outlets, adding opinion.  The paradox is that sites like this are dependent on the original reporting done by papers whose financial model is disintegrating, and if they die, what will sites like this talk about?

I never said that the internet would put elements of the MSM completely out of business.  That would be a gross underestimation of the MSM.  There is still a need for print and broadcast news as you point out but they are taking a big hit in terms of revenues.  So I feel a symbiotic relationship will have to develop between the internet and the MSM, for the benefit of all...including the general public.

ccob is addressing the real problem regarding pay for view web pages. The costs need to seem trivial. We still need a system of "micro-payments" whose transaction costs would be very small. If you only had to pay 5 cents to view a page, you might not hesitate. Say 10,000 views a day at 5 cents each might provide the basis for a business model that could work. 

Right, but the key difference is that people ultimately paid for cable TV because they received more program options and better picture quality.  In much of the country, broadcast TV provided only 4-6 channels.

Until premium internet content is substantially superior to free content, very few people will pay for the service.

I honestly don't see how the classical newspapers are going to survive.  The Boston Globe, NYT, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and LA Times that I know of have all had massive layoffs in reporting staff this year.  I don't know the percentages for all news reporters but I believe it was 20% at the Globe and 40% at the P-D.  How much longer can that go on before the newspapers just evaporate?

I agree with your point sPh.  I think this is symptomatic of the financial woes of the print media.  It is actually scary if these dailies go under in terms of fewer news outlets.  They are going to have to change the way they operate their businesses in order to survive...