Winning the Web war will take strategy

I recently read a column that put forth a pretty interesting idea about how newspapers can compete with the Internet and how papers should shut off the fountain of free information.

In this column, it was suggested that papers should stop allowing other media outlets to use their content without strict attribution. Web sites would no longer be allowed to link to a newspaper's Internet pages therefore bypassing a lot of paid advertising. If someone wanted to read an individual story, they would have to use the paper's Web site as a portal and not some other site.

The writer proposed papers "shut off the taps" of free information.

There is little doubt that Web sites have drained more than a few readers from our pages but as long as the content remains strong with an emphasis on local and community news that can't be obtained from other sources, I suspect newspapers will survive in some form.

The thing that some people seem to miss is that it's not the content that is becoming less marketable, it's the newsprint that is becoming a harder sell.

A lot of people get their daily news ration from television these days but have you ever noticed how little hard news seems to be broken by the major networks? A lot of times, you will hear the TV anchor lead a story with “The Washington Post is reporting” or “According to The New York Times ....” So it's not that newspapers have lagged behind in relevance or importance. There's little doubt the newspaper industry is the leading form of investigative journalism in the United States.

There will probably come a day when instead of prepping a page for the press, we'll be getting them ready for our Web masters. As with any business, newspapers must adapt to survive and compete.

One of the many advantages we have over Beta Max, the Edsel, New Coke and covered wagons is that our product is essentially sound, necessary and an important part of people's lives.

Besides being incredibly hard to police, shutting off a paper's Web pages seems to be a very drastic move. There is something inherently wrong with a journalist having information and actively trying to keep it out of the hands of the public.

There are plenty of people out there with great schemes to evolve newspapers into something new. Some of these plans have merit while others are, shall we be polite, dumb.

Since some time in the mid-1980s, one of the buzzwords (or phrases in this case) business leaders have enjoyed dealing out is “thinking outside the box.” Perhaps there is a strong middle ground between the rational and the absurd that will ease some of the challenges.

But by continuing to be a service industry that produces a product that cannot be duplicated, converted to a podcast or injected directly into our cerebral cortexes, newspapers will survive. It's the industry's commitment to quality that will ensure the future.

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