Newspapers: Consequences of Free News

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In the May 10th eBulletin of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association,
Walter E. Hussman Jr., the Publisher of the successful Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, posted a feature entitled "When the News is Free".

He questions the value of newspapers giving away their news to web site visitors. In a brief, well-reasoned article, he evaluates the big picture. The newspaper industry is losing money AND subscribers by spending valuable resources to collect news, which it then gives away to websites and sells (through the AP) to news aggregators like Yahoo, Google and MSN.

This is a fresh perspective, and a contrarian viewpoint to today's rush-to-build-a-better-web-site newspaper mindset. If you dare to question the status quo, read this. The link is:
http://www.snpa.org/circuitaddon/ebu...07.htm#hussman

I look forward to your thoughts on the relationship between newspapers and the web.