First up is the absolutely appalling handling of a new business model by the Tallahassee Democrat. The paper is going to start charging for news online – which the publisher finally gets around to saying on the second page after a long-winded, self-congratulatory monologue.

The column says:

It no longer seems fair to have only half of our readers pay for content while the other half reads for free online. This is about changing how we do business, not simply putting up a paywall on digital content.

Unless the TD happens to charge quite a bit for their print edition, the print subscribers aren’t paying for that journalism any more than the digital readers. They’re merely paying to have it delivered to their homes on expensive paper. That payment isn’t covering the cost of the reporting and editing. More on that later.

Aside: The same column that says online readers aren’t paying for content is unnecessarily paginated into three pages in order to rack up page views and generate online ad revenue. Talk about adding insult to injury.

But at least the paper’s publisher and editor were only trying to pull a fast one over on digital readers. A columnist at the paper upped the ante, going so far as to equate online readers with shoplifters.

He also seems to espouse the belief that the paper’s journalists are apparently above criticism, especially from the criminals who consume their news online. I won’t bother excerpting, as the entire column is essentially about this point.

Both pieces not only reflect complete distaste for online readers, they also seem to be a bit behind the times. The production of journalism is paid for by advertising revenue, which has been largely generated by printed ads in the past (hence why these guys want to keep readers there).

I suppose the Democrat must have missed the news that online advertising will soon be surpassing print. Maybe they’d be better off finding new ways to market themselves to online readers to keep more eyeballs on their site.

That brings us to the other newspaper industry wishful thought of the week: The classic “we’re the only trusted source for news” mantra.

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt told the Tri-City Herald a bedtime story about how “real” journalists are far more trustworthy than bloggers.

It is often impossible to know if anyone has verified the material that’s on the internet or whether anyone is held responsible for rumors, misinformation or outright libel.

That uncertainty is working in newspapers’ favor. People are turning to newspaper websites as a trusted source.

I’m not sure where Pruitt got his facts, which the paper reiterated without any backing up, because they’re quite flawed. I guess those online types aren’t the only ones who don’t back up what they hear from biased sources with real reporting. (Zing)

Thankfully, the Herald’s coverage area has blogger Matt McGee to set the record straight – with links to back up his claims. As my boss, Steve Buttry, asks in his post on this back-and-forth, “Which is the stronger example of journalism?”

This standoffish game has to stop if newspapers want to stick around. As these guys are out there turning away online readers and dismissing potential partners, news startups like TBD are out there ready to pick them up. And we aren’t alone.

Scoff if you want, but readers do, in fact, trust bloggers and news via social media more than you think. As the online medium continues to grow – and today’s young people continue to grow as news consumers – this New Frontier will become News as We Know It. Don’t newspapers want to be a part of that?

The same people we’ve had to file FOIA requests about for decades want to help us “save” our industry. Isn’t that nice of them? It isn’t like they don’t have other things to worry about.

Ideas on the table include waiving antitrust statutes to allow newspapers to all charge for online content at once, taxing iPads and other e-readers, establishing a government fund to pay young journalists to do…something and allowing newspapers to charge aggregators for linking to their content.

If these are the solutions proposed, it’s pretty easy to see what the problem REALLY is. Journalism isn’t what they’re trying to save here – it’s newspapers. And not just any newspapers – the government is trying to prop up a defiantly anti-evolutionary business model supported by big corporations who can actually afford to save themselves if they’d be willing to make a little less profit.

These solutions would do far more harm than good for journalism. They seek to punish those innovative individuals and news organizations that are trying – and sometimes failing – to do business a new way in order to survive. But at least they’re trying.

Allowing big, established publications to break all the rules would push the online startups and hardworking bloggers out of business – and for what? To make sure the Gannetts of the world are still able to pay out big dividends to shareholders? To create throwaway jobs for young journalists who can and should be paid by the news organizations that currently make money off their free work?

More importantly, this kind of move seeks to take choice away from the American people. Newspaper readership isn’t down because the Internet “steals” their product – it’s because readers have chosen to get news elsewhere. News consumers want to read news online, on Twitter, on mobile devices and iPads. Some would just rather hear about what’s going on from a favorite blogger or a friend on Facebook than a 600-word news article. Forcing people to pay for news from newspapers doesn’t make information more accessible – and THAT should be the goal of any government intervention.

Journalism is doing fine – it’s only old media that needs a lifeline. The government can study all they want – and, by all means, they can go ahead and start offering bribes – er, subsidies and new statutes – to aid news organizations. But anyone who takes this money has no business calling themselves journalists anymore. “Ministers of Information” may be more appropriate.

Fact is, many website visitors, as much as they may complain about comments, love to read them.  Cincinnati.Com gets a lot of traffic just to the comment sections associated with stories. In January alone, Cincinnati.Com got more than 700,000 page views to just the comments on stories (not counting blogs, forums, etc.). When we choose to take comments off of certain stories, I can see the effect it has on page views in our analytics analysis.

So what? Maybe we want to take the high road, page views be damned, right?

Dream on.

This comment backlash has revealed another “have your cake and eat it too” problem for the news industry. We want the page views, but don’t feel comfortable with the sort of content that tends to bring them in.

I speak from experience when I say that nothing is more likely to make a newsroom editors exude multiple personalities quite like the almighty page view. One minute they’re railing on about how we’re above using non-news linkbait online. The next, they’re in a froth over a party girl photo gallery with hundreds of thousands of page views, asking for more of the same. When your job depends on it, it can be rough to keep up.

Have I posted or promoted a story because I knew it would get comments (and thus, page views)? Absolutely. It happens on every size of news site and blog. We attempt to balance our tastes and news judgment with the harsh and unpleasant realities of online revenue every single day.

I really doubt news execs are really willing to give up the multiple millions of page views associated with comments on stories every year. Maybe, just maybe, they’d instead be willing to invest a bit of money and personnel in making those comments a bit better via good moderation.

Maybe I’m the one who’s dreaming?

“They’re toxic.”

“That’s not conversation.”

“They don’t represent the community at all.”

Or do they?

It isn’t a possibility I as a member of the human race would like to face, but what if these comments that we insist only come from fringe corners of the mean old interwebs really do represent our communities?

Consider this… When I encounter particularly prolific, appalling or trollish accounts on Cincinnati.Com, I’ll look up their IP address to see if they’re posting from our coverage area. In these random hunts, I have never found one that wasn’t local.

For better or worse, these members do represent part of the readership we claim to serve. As ugly as it might be, they are part of the fabric of this community, so should we as a news organization and conversation hub be trying to suppress their opinions?

We know, at the very least, they represent the most vocal and opinionated elements of the community. They simply care more than those who oppose them.

So how much responsibility does the community itself bear for allowing toxic, racist, partisan trolls to represent the coverage area at large? If the rest of the community has a problem with their viewpoints, registration on Cincinnati.Com is free. Why not take them on? At the very least, you to are free to correct them and share your views, too. You can’t let the crazies win.

I don’t necessarily believe this, of course. I know good moderation, staff interaction and better comment tools can help shape comments into conversation. These are, however, the sort of questions we have to be asking ourselves if we as journalists really want to be part of the communities in which we live and work.

“These people” are out there. Some are subscribers. All are readers. Chew on that for a bit and let me know what you think.

The local coverage of this high-profile trial has provided a demonstration in action of how important the very roots of good court reporting still are in this age of social media.

There’s no less than two TV stations live blogging the trial and several outlets and reporters live-tweeting the proceedings, including Enquirer court reporter Kimball Perry. Fox19 has a very interesting Dipity timeline on the case (kudos to them). This is all in addition to the exhaustive video, stories, photo galleries, etc. that we usually are serving up at a trial like this.

Honestly, it’s all gotten to a point where I believe readers may be over-saturated with coverage.

Even with all of this going on, thing’s get missed. Kimball has been scooping the heck out of the people recording the event live right next to him because, well, he knows what’s going on. At one point, a couple of local TV reporters asked him what just happened and what it meant.  They knew he knew – and he was explaining all of it on his Twitter feed (and shooting Flip videos).

This isn’t to knock on TV competition or social media, but merely to underscore how even with all of this technology available and a million ways to describe what’s happening, it is the oldest skill set in the toolbox that has offered one-of-a-kind insight into a difficult case.

This isn’t something Kimball does just for big trials, he’s in that courtroom every day. He found out the defendant was pleading guilty before anyone else because he knew who to ask – and how to ask. A lot of our competitors don’t have reporters in court often enough and long enough to soak up the experience, lingo and legal know-how to cover a trial the way Kimball does.

That’s just what good beat reporting’s all about – and it’s something we seem to have less of all the time as we have to do more with less. Twitter and live blogs and all that are great tools for enhancing the way readers get news, but it’s tough to replace the know-how of an experienced beat reporter.

We’ve also found that the newfangled tools available aren’t always the best options depending on the circumstances.

This fascination with live-blogging at the local level started last spring during a similarly high-profile trial in Warren County, where a young newlywed was accused (and convicted) of killing his young wife. Local TV station WLWT sent reporter Travis Gettys to live blog the trial using CoveritLive. It was immensely popular and Gettys became something of a local celebrity – it was good stuff.

We have Cover it Live and use it for chats and live blogs sometimes. We could have used it in that trial, but we chose not to. Our reporter in that case, Janice Morse, strongly believed her coverage would be better informed and more comprehensive if she were paying strict attention to the trial and not describing the proceedings.

While I think both kinds of coverage would be valuable to readers – we could only send one person, so we opted for the old way. She said that over the course of the trial, those live-somethinging the proceedings had asked her what was going on, what a particular term meant, etc. And rightly so, I know from live blogging past events that you don’t always really take in what’s going on, information sort of passes through you. That can make it very tough to go back and write a comprehensive story at the end of the day.

The live blog is just one tool – and one we don’t always have to use. The same goes for Twitter, video, carrier pigeons and anything else me might try to get out info to readers. When it comes down to it, sometimes you just need someone to help explain stuff. That’s our job.

He also gives a shout-out to ZJ and its commenters. Check it out.

For weeks I’ve been thinking of writing one of these posts on Four Square, as everyone else has, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it.

While I have been dreaming up some ways my paper can use geolocation services in regards to marketing, branding, advertising and repurposing news content, I simply cannot bring myself to suggest that newsroom personnel omgjusthavetobedoingthisrightnow. No, just no.

Sure, it’d be great to have reporters go out and leave tips, links and trivia all over town on FourSquare, but  I have to consider how much I’m willing to give up for that. I don’t know what it is like at everyone else’s newsroom, but I don’t have extra people waiting around for work to do – and frankly, I’d much rather have an online update from the courthouse by 10 am than a bunch of tips on where to find great public art on Four Square or Gowalla.

We in the social media cheerleader camp need a reality check sometimes. I’m frequently the one saying “We’ll find time, just don’t say no yet”, but as I’ve found myself stretched to run the news site and tweet and send email alerts and monitor traffic and and and – I know we can’t say yes to everything anymore. More importantly, we new media snobs shouldn’t feel as if we’re dinosaurs because we aren’t here, there and everywhere on every social network.

Case in point: Right after Google Buzz launched, Old Media New Tricks (who I love, by the way) was on the case, telling us how papers should get their Buzz profiles set up and hop to the status updates. While I don’t blame them for suggesting it (they do need to get blog readers after all) I had to question it. Not every newsroom can afford to have a staffer who can send status updates to a myriad of services all day. With the still-limited spread of Buzz and widespread popularity of Twitter, why divert our already-stretched resources there? It simply fueled the notion we social media types tend to have that says, “Well, this is out there and someday you’re going to look dumb if you weren’t doing it a long time ago.”

I recently attended a presentation by some incredibly talented social media gurus in my local network and one part of their message especially rang out loud and clear to this harried soul: Pick a few social media practices that work for you and do them well.

We as an industry should take that to heart.

Every newsroom should have a goal in mind for their social media use – and then should pick and choose the right tools to best go after that goal without sacrificing what’s important. Consider how seamlessly a social media practice will fit into the newsroom’s workload – and consider if a new idea is worth taking a staff member away from this task or that task (if that’s the case).

It isn’t always a good investment of your limited resources to chase every social media rainbow that comes along – picking just a few is more than OK.

Recently, The Cincinnati Enquirer (my employer) has been experimenting with ideas to boost the value of the printed newspaper. As an online employee my entire career, it’s been a bit out of my wheelhouse to focus on print, especially since the Enquirer’s previous claims to fame have been more in the digital side. Whether we like it or not, print still pays the bills, so our paper – and many papers – are willing to experiment if it means keeping the lights on.

The experiment started Feb. 7 when the Enquirer editors opted to hold the publication of our big Sunday showcase story until 5 p.m. on Sunday in order to to boost single-copy sales of the Sunday print edition. Prior to this, we had been posting the weekend blowouts online on Friday mornings or afternoons to give a “sneak peek” of sorts to our online readers.

The next week, Feb. 14, the experiment widened as the editors opted against publishing the Sunday centerpiece online at all. The print-only designation grew further this past weekend, Feb. 20, as one Sunday feature in every section of the newspaper was designated to be “print only”, with an icon denoting it as such in the paper.

On the Fridays before these experiments, we put a promo on the front of our site telling our online readers what they’d be missing online over the weekend and urging them to buy a newspaper. I don’t know what kind of reaction bubbled up to those on the print side, but I know I fielded a few reactions from readers looking for those stories online after the fact.

It could take awhile to determine the experiment’s success – or even figure out what success really means. My editor, Tom Callinan, said he expects the experimentation to become more focused and strategic over time. It could possibly accelerate toward a pay wall or premium model of some sort in the future.  I guess we’ll see what develops.

I realize this kind of print-only content plan is hardly unheard-of, as many papers (see this in the Minneapolis Star Tribune)  have been holding some or all publication from the web – and it’s pretty much the norm in the magazine publishing world.

I’m putting this out there because I’d like some feedback.

If you’re a Cincinnati-area reader: Did you notice this? What did you think? If you saw a story promoted only that was print-only that interested you, would it prompt you to seek out a Sunday paper?

If you’re an industry wonk (or wannabe wonk like me): What’s your reaction to this kind of experimentation? Do you know of other news sites that usually have everything online withholding their best stories from the web? More importantly, is this working to boost print sales?

If you don’t want to leave a comment, shoot me an email.

Editor’s Note:  I opted against editorializing on this experiment because (as you might imagine) I like getting a paycheck. While I have a lot of thoughts on this, I’ll save them for internal discussions where they might actually be useful.  You can probably figure out where I stand if you’ve ever read this blog before.

The plan suggests that online readers who do not subscribe to the print product will be asked to pay a flat rate to access articles after a certain number of site visits. They have not outlined how many articles a non-subscriber could visit before being asked to pay, but it could be anywhere from three or four to ten. The plan is obviously aimed at protecting their print product by making some pieces unavailable for free online while saying a little prayer that they can still make some money off their “frequent” online readers.

While I think it’s great that the NYT will have some system in place for the occasional reader (as opposed to an all-or-nothing pay wall), one can’t help but wonder how long their “frequent readers” will remain frequent. While I’m not saying it’s a bad idea to try out, the Times execs will need to readjust their expectations for their online readership stats when they go forward with this plan.

I know I don’t visit the Times Online every day, but will if I hear about a good movie review, interesting recipe or perceived trend story of the day. It’s in those quirky features that the Times may lose its foothold as a must-read with those “frequent readers” in question. In fact, it may have to question it’s entire content strategy.

To see what I mean, take a look at the Times’ most emailed list. Those are the sort of stories – in addition to the occasional style or column – that these “frequent readers” have sent to them or find via Google. They aren’t occasionally visiting the Times to catch up on city government news – they’re coming from all over the nation and the world to read about those outrageous New Yorkers taking their four-year-olds to get pedicures or see what Tom Friedman has to say about China.

These sort of stories, while interesting, may not have enough utility to a reader to warrant a subscription or regular fee. You can get the headlines from somewhere else – the rest is just gravy. Not everyone wants to pay for gravy. The Times learned that before when they did their two-year freemium plan called TimesSelect, which limited access to opinion pieces and other online features. They shut it down in 2007 because, surprise surprise, closing off part of your website kills your search engine optimization and web traffic.

They will get smaller traffic numbers. They will fall in online metrics stats when compared to other sites. They’ll need to be ready for that – and the (further) drop in online ad revenue that goes with it.

They may also want to reconsider the kind of content they produce if this “frequent reader” base depletes. They may have to largely abandon their online bread-and-butter in that most emailed list. If those formerly frequent readers try to stay below whatever the monthly visit limit is, they may want to use their tokens on something more substantial than, say, a trend story about designer shoes for dogs. They may not want to pay – or ask their friends to pay – for the content they used to email or share so freely on Facebook or Twitter. It may be time to rethink whether or not those sort of stories should be written at all, especially if the Times ends up cutting staff again.

In the meantime, the rest of us in the newspaper industry are content to let the Times be the canary in the coal mine. We’ll see if they stick with it and if it manages to make money in the end, though even if it does work, it may not be scaleable for the small daily or metro. I guess we’ll see what happens in 2011…

Of course, we as an industry keep digging our own graves by prematurely declaring the death of journalism in columns and blogs every week. We really need to learn a lesson or two about message management.

Now the bad news. The people we as an industry rely on to make important business decisions (including keeping some of us employed) don’t have a clue how precarious our presence in the marketplace is without loyalty from readers.

A survey from the American Press Institute indicates a big disconnect between news executives and readers when it comes to judging the importance of the local print newspaper – and of those papers’ presence online.

One particularly appalling bit of info: 75% news execs think switching off their websites will drive people back to print newspapers instead of other websites. Readers, of course, say they’d simply go to another local news website, national news site or TV/radio. The execs seem to think this is still the boom era for newspapers and they still have a monopoly.

These people are deciding the future of my industry. God help us.