news-record.com

On the day after Barack Obama was elected president, people stood in line outside The Washington Post to buy copies of the election edition, both to read it and to keep as souvenirs. That same thirst for newspapers occurred at the News & Record, The New York Times, USA Today and across America.

Ruth Marcus, a columnist and editorial writer for The Washington Post who spoke at a recent Zeidman Colloquium at Duke University, said she walked up and down the line at The Post saying "thank you" to customers. Marcus also urged readers to keep reading The Post -- and not just on historic occasions.

It's no secret that newspapers have hit hard times. The News & Record has run numerous stories explaining that advertising and circulation have declined and that the recession has been unkind to all newspapers.

As my colleague Jeri Rowe recently wrote: "Over the past 18 months, we've lost some good people at the News & Record because of the difficulties we and every other newspaper nationwide are facing."

Almost all newspapers contain fewer pages because advertisers aren't knocking on the door. Even the formerly obese Sunday edition of The New York Times has lost weight. (Most newspapers derive the majority of their revenue from advertisements; circulation and newsstand sales are the other two sources.)

The newspaper industry is exploring new options for survival. The Christian Science Monitor is shutting down its print edition and morphing into a free Web newspaper. The Detroit Free Press will slash home delivery to three days per week and be an online newspaper for the remainder.

Yet both online newspapers will depend on advertisers. And that's the wrinkle. Online ads have declined, just as they've decreased in most print newspapers. And online ads usually produce less revenue than print ads.

But now another proposal for saving newspapers is getting loud buzz. It says: Newspapers should stop giving away their online edition for free and charge a small fee, say $3 to $5 per month. The Wall Street Journal's online edition not only charges for a monthly subscription but increased sales by 7 percent in 2008 -- even in a recession.

A recent Time magazine cover story, headlined "How to Save Your Newspaper," lays out the case for paying a small fee to read online newspapers. Walter Isaacson, former managing editor of Time, writes that there's something odd about the newspaper crisis. "Newspapers have more readers than ever. Their content ... is more popular than ever ... even among young people."

It's just that fewer readers are paying for it. Last year the Pew Research Center found that more people read free online newspapers than print versions. To which he adds: "Who can blame them?

"This is not a business model that makes sense. Perhaps it appeared to be when Web advertising was booming ..." but not now. What's more, ads for online editions are dwindling, just as they are for print newspapers. So it's time for readers to pay, he argues.

Stud Bykofsky, a columnist for The Philadelphia Daily News, echoes this view. He favors a small monthly fee, maybe $5, "for our content, which is copyrighted, then sue the pants off anyone stealing it. Should Google 'pick up' (steal) our stuff, if we successfully sued them for $1 billion, two good things happen: 1) our money problems are solved; and 2) everyone else will stop stealing our content."

David Carr, a columnist for The New York Times, is singing the same tune. He quotes a business analyst, Craig Moffett of Bernstein Research, who said: "Free is not a business model. It sounded good and everybody got excited about it but when you look around, it is creating havoc and will not work in the long term."

But if newspapers charge a fee to online readers, it would require a gentleman's agreement among, say, the largest 300 or so, to sign up. Bloggers and newsmagazines can join, too. One journalist suggested it might pose an anti-trust issue. Waivers are granted, and there's ample justification for saving newspapers because they're the bedrock of a democratic society. Why? They deliver the news, expose wrongdoing, inform the electorate, provide a forum for open debate about issues.

I'm often asked: "Will newspapers survive?" I'm an optimist who loves newspapers and believes they'll make it. And, like Ruth Marcus of The Washington Post, I want to say, "Thank you for reading us, and please stick with us. We need each other."

Rosemary Roberts writes a column on alternate Fridays. E-mail: rmroberts@triad.rr.com.