“Buffett: Newspapers Failed to Adapt to Internet” reports:
“Investment legend Warren Buffett says the newspaper industry’s sorry state stems from its inability to adjust to change, especially the Internet…
“When the Internet came along, you gave away your (online) product for free and charged for it in another place (print),” Buffett said.
As for whether his Buffalo paper will charge for online news, Buffett said, ‘We are going to look at everything everyone else does. How do you charge when a thousand other people don’t?’
“Rupert Murdoch, whose Wall Street Journal charges for online subscriptions, has been emphatic about the need to charge for news on the web.”
WATCHDOG: The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times (London) provide information valuable to business which cannot be readily obtained elsewhere. If Buffett can come up with a way to sell subscriptions for daily newspapers which seldom carry essential local news, he will have proven himself a financial genius one more time.
I would disagree that local news is not essential. Look at all the misinformation printed on Lancaster issues such as F&M’s public money grab, the convention center, among others.
After recent experiences with the poor reporting of Lancaster Newspapers, I, for one, would pay for local news that wasn’t bias and glossed over. Perhaps a subscription-based (not ad based) local newspaper that could truly present all sides and has a foundation of serious reporters and even attorneys to navigate the Right-To-Know laws.
Fewer stories with more depth and ongoing coverage (with ALL views) would be refreshing, informative, instructive, much-needed, and most certainly worth paying for. If nothing else, the subscription could be viewed as a contribution to keeping the playing field fair and level and open to all.
FYI, Lancaster Newspapers saw this coming more than 10 years ago, and still hasn’t a clue how to deal with it. They started doing research into falling readership and Internet access back in the late 90’s.