An Antidote for Web Overload. For the longest time, whenever I read the news, I’ve often felt the depressing sensation of lacking the background I need to understand the stories that seem truly important.
Day after day would bring front pages with headlines trumpeting new developments out of city hall, and day after day I’d fruitlessly comb through the stories for an explanation of their relevance, history or import. Nut grafs seemed to provide only enough information for me to realize the story was out of my depth. I came to think of following the news as requiring a decoder ring, attainable only through years of reading news stories and looking for patterns, accumulating knowledge like so many cereal box tops I could someday cash in for the prize of basic understanding.
Journalism Online: time to start paying for online news - Ars Te. The Internet is quickly destroying the need for newspapers to run printing presses, distribute papers around the city, and employ newspaper carriers, but the cost savings have come with revenue losses, too: most newspapers offer their online content without subscription fees, supported only by ads.
A group of media executives has just announced Journalism Online, a new way for newspapers to start charging for online subscription fees. Will it save journalism? "We have formed Journalism Online, because we think this is a special moment in time when there is an urgent need for a business model that allows quality journalism to be the beneficiary of the Internet's efficient delivery mechanism rather than its victim," said cofounder Steven Brill.
That circulation revenue will come from a new Web portal that handles payments and authentication.