The comment by T D above is specially apropos. “After two weeks of free delivery I think I’ve read parts of 4 or 5 stories. Even free, it’s not worth reading.”

The news that we get from a paper is an aggregate, a cement of stuff we consider news mixed with other stuff we don’t care about; like horoscopes for non-mystics, reviews of movies which aren’t targeted at you, real-estate news when you’re not looking for a house, and news about a topic you don’t give a crap about.

But with the internet, we Google what we want.

We don’t want to support stuff we don’t care about in order to get the stuff we do care about.

Its a question of efficiency and its innate in human beings to seek out the most efficient source of whatever interests them.

Given that the direction that business is headed in is clear, (using the N:M internet to subsume the 1:N nature of the media,) and that the focus is much sharper, (down to individual news items and explorations of segments of the news,) the rise of specialized media is inevitable.

Its a question of monetization and there is a need for an intermediary for handling subscriptions and micro payments for individual news items.

Business still needs to build buzz for its product, earned P.R. as opposed to paid advertising, but its much more efficient if that can occur on the linked internet on specialized web-sites.

His paper is only that; tomorrow’s fish wrapper

Its a 1:N throwback in a world which has become N:M.

Mass media has its place, but that place is not carrying the freight for businesses because they want more that plain, unconnected paper can possibly deliver.

Forget about ad-supported content.

Its been dead since before Y2k and its currently thrashing about in its death throws.

Deal with it

The only survivors will be those who can add value to the packaging of data and turn it into information, otherwise businesses don’t need you.

The real problem is filling the digital (or print) version with valuable content.

Right now my hometown paper (one of the top 25) is giving us a month’s free subscription to try to get us back as subscribers. Trouble is the paper is so untrustworthy and one-sided that it’s not worth even a minor sum–like $2.00 or $3.00/mo. Why pay for something you always have to keep checking up on? After two weeks of free delivery I think I’ve read parts of 4 or 5 stories. Even free, it’s not worth reading.

NBC is teetering on the brink as GE is thinking very seriously of selling its stake out to ComCast.

This is merely the first card to fall and, like any house of cards, once it starts, it all comes apart.

As loath as I am to stick my neck out, I predict that within the year the switch to digital OTA signals will have been rendered moot.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s nook are back ordered for 2009 with a month to go before Christmas.

News (and by extension, journalism,) is a fine profession to go into.

Smudging sheets of dead trees with ink, meh, not so good.