Murdoch to charge to read all online papers

Of course, the Wall Street Journal already charges for some content, but this is news indeed, and good news.

My only question is, does he mean just staff-generated news, or is he going to try to charge for wires, too?

To me, this has been one of the biggest failures of Dean Singleton as head of the Associated Press — the failure to push for a paywall, perhaps as a mandatory requirement under the new AP package, then doubling or tripling charges to Yahoo, Google, et al. And, playing hardball with AFP and Reuters if they don’t want to play along.

Dallas Morning News planning more layoffs?

A source of mine says it's likely. And, sadly, it's not hard to see why.

I took a gander at today's paper, not to read a single story, but to eyeball inches on display ads. Here's a quick summary.

• Front section? About 30 percent ads, decent amount of them color.
• Metro? Almost adless, not counting obits.
• Guide section? About 10 percent, not counting the four pages of advertorial. (And, how many people, like me, wonder if newspapers will eventually take the "advertorial" tag off advertorial items, if there's any way they can?)
• Business section? It did have a full-page color Ebby Halliday ad at back. Otherwise, not counting classifieds, about 10 percent ads.
• ONE non-classified ad in the entire sports section. (That said, people who defend major daily newspaper sports coverage in general? Sure, people may read it, but it's always been below normal on display ad inches. If you are, or have been, in the journalism business and still want to try to defend it, stop. It is indefensible from a business position.)
• Overall? About 15 percent display ads.

For people who don't know, a healthy margin is about 60-40 advertising to editorial copy. And since, traditionally, major newspapers have relied 75 percent on advertising, 25 percent on circulation, now you can understand just how bad of trouble this is.

And, most auto ads? Never coming back. Real estate? Will be slow, even in a relatively "bubbleless" DFW.

As for going more and more online? People still haven't figured out how to adequately monetize online ad revenues. And, while you save trees, paper, ink and press costs, you still need (theoretically) web copy editors, online content/upload editors, etc.

Blogging? That's like the Morning News thinking it's like the NY Times editorial page during Times Select times. You see much in the way of ad revenue there?

With newspapers like this …

It’s no wonder the industry is struggling.

The more I look for jobs, the more idiocy I see within the newspaper world (And I’m not just looking for jobs there.)

Here’s one example: A semiweekly paper that just did a website redesign that, except for the top banner, has no locally sold ads, just Google AdSense ads. And, you can’t even access classifieds online with this paper now.

Another… a group of two weekly papers and one semiweekly in the same market as a five-day daily that covers most the same territory, and saying they use their joint website to be like a daily. (The competition to is the best five-day daily, on both design and content, I’ve ever seen, going by the one issue in the racks.) That said, the group of non-dailies does have each of its editors cut a video short each week.

Yet another. A seven-day daily with no staff photographer is bad enough. One that runs submitted photos as the lead art half the time is even worse. (And it’s the rare duck that’s afternoon M-F and mornings Sat-Sun.)

My own former paper, which was doing all sorts of dumb ad trade-outs, like swapping a 1x8 ad to Cinemark in exchange for movie passes, or giving the eventual ad sales manager’s hubby a 2x5 trade-out in exchange for him allegedly being our computer consultant, even though he only knew PCs and not Macs.