Google’s Insider View On Why Newspapers Are Screwed
“The fact of the matter is that newspapers have never made much money from news,” wrote Google’s chief economist Hal Varian on the Google Public Policy blog.
Varian was writing a summary of his presentation at the Federal Trade Commission’s hearings on the future of journalism in Washington, D.C.
His main messages: Newspapers need to experiment with new business models, publish online because it’s cheaper, and forget about paywalls unless they have specialized content that users really need.
