Newspaper Rescue Plan, continued

So here's the online strategy I recommend....

1. News outlets form a consortium and put all their online content behind a wall.

2. Create a new search engine (based on keyword, geography, date)

3. News websites show video and story teasers only;Users must pay subscription to access full articles (or go out and buy the paper)

Which brings me to the topic of print. Although many bloggers and social networking entrepreneurs think (and maybe even hope) that print is dying....it's simply not the case. At least not yet. Online revenues aren't even close to bringing in as much money.

In 2008, newspapers drew about $38 billion in advertising. Only $3 billion came from online....the rest came from print.

Newspaper Advertising, Print vs. Online (from the State of the News Media 2009)

"GateHouse Media was effectively broke by mid-2008, The Tribune Company

filed for bankruptcy reorganization in December and Journal Register,

Philadelphia Newspapers and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune went into bankruptcy

early in 2009. Most of these papers, however, are still profitable, and could continue in business once separated from the parent company’s debt."

- the State of the News Media 2009

And it's no wonder why Google would not want something like Newsfindr to launch....

It's spelled out in this Google SEC filing on Feb. 13, 2009…

"We rely on our Google Network members for a significant portion of our revenues, and we benefit from our association with them. The loss of these members could adversely affect our business.

We provide advertising, web search and other services to our Google Network members, which accounted for 35% of our revenues in 2007 and 31% of our revenues in 2008. Some of the participants in this network may compete with us in one or more areas. They may decide in the future to terminate their agreements with us. If our Google Network members decide to use a competitor’s or their own web search or advertising services, our revenues would decline. Our agreements with a few of the largest Google Network members account for a significant portion of revenues derived from our AdSense program. If our relationship with one or more large Google Network members were terminated or renegotiated on terms less favorable to us, our business could be adversely affected.

Also, certain of our key Google Network members operate high-profile web sites, and we derive tangible and intangible benefits from this affiliation. If one or more of these key relationships is terminated or not renewed, and is not replaced with a comparable relationship, our business would be adversely affected.

Proprietary document formats may limit the effectiveness of our search technology by preventing our technology from accessing the content of documents in such formats, which could limit the effectiveness of our products and services.

A large amount of information on the internet is provided in proprietary document formats such as Microsoft Word. The providers of the software application used to create these documents could engineer the document format to prevent or interfere with our ability to access the document contents with our search technology. This would mean that the document contents would not be included in our search results even if the contents were directly relevant to a search. The software providers may also seek to require us to pay them royalties in exchange for giving us the ability to search documents in their format. If the software provider also competes with us in the search business, they may give their search technology a preferential ability to search documents in their proprietary format. Any of these results could harm our brand and our operating results."