How did David Lazarus get a business column at the LAT? His thinking is muddled and his ignorance is appalling.
Who would pay to read his columns? Not me.
LA Times business columnist David Lazarus argues this week that newspapers are crazy to be giving away all that valuable information they produce (via Romenesko):
Newspapers, including this one, give away the store online, all the while wringing their hands about declining revenue and circulation. Everyone says the Net represents the future of journalism, and that’s probably true. But at this point, no one knows how to make much money at it.
I’m scratching my head trying to come up with another financially challenged industry that found salvation by charging people nothing for its output.
It’s a favorite theme for Lazarus, who garnered a lot of withering commentary from uppitty bloggers for a column he wrote a few months ago, when he was still at the SF Chronicle, arguing that
It’s time for newspapers to stop giving away the store. We as an industry need to start charging for — or at the very least controlling — use of our products online.
This time around he talked to a bunch of students at his alma mater, some fancy private school in Santa Monica, who told him they’re happy to pay for music via iTunes but would never pay for online news.
Now that was interesting. These bright, info-hungry, computer-savvy kids willingly paid for the latest cuts from Alicia Keys or Fergie. But they couldn’t imagine having the same relationship with the New York Times, say, or the much-respected, widely esteemed news outlet you’re currently enjoying. "A lot of this has to do with a big generation gap," explained Phoebe, 15.
Actually, no, it’s not really about a generation gap. News was already pretty close to free long before the Internet came along. It was free on TV, free on the radio, and effectively free in newspapers when you consider all the valuable stuff that came packaged with it for 25 or 50 cents, from comics to crosswords to classifieds to supermarket ads.
…Update: Lifted from a comment by Gregg Turk:
I started my career in newspaper circulation many years ago. Our purpose was to get the paper in front of eyeballs for our advertisers without losing any money. In other words we were revenue neutral. It seems to me that the internet does that quickly and easily today.
