Check out the revenue sources in the bottom right. The key question becomes how do you design a business where the current 7% of revenues that comes from online sources becomes 80% of revenues? Clearly that amount needs to grow through higher ad rates, online syndication fees, subscriptions to specialty content, etc. But let’s imagine a world where say, the New York Times has to support its entire operations on say twice what it now makes in online revenue.

I don’t think that future is very pleasant for people like me who really depend on the NYT to be a newspaper of record or to the many employees of the Times. There are other revenue sources of course. Micropayments have been a notional one for years. Credit card companies resist this but there are technical means around their objections.

Budget help from Mint.com

In today’s episode, the Newspaper Industry. To recap: newspapers are going broke. The large multi-paper conglomerates overspent in the 80’s and 90’s and loaded themselves down with debt. So, even though their flagship newspapers are still doing okay, they cannot meet their debt obligations. See: The Tribune Company. Other papers are seeing one of their main revenue sources, classified advertising, eaten away by Craigslist, et. al.

For smaller papers, lower revenues mean a smaller “news hole” and fewer reporting resources. This leads to a downward spiral where there is less original, local reporting, the relevance of the newspaper decreases, readership – already hemorrhaging to the web – decline further through disatisfaction and so on.

The news business is changing radically. There will be a new business model for printed news. The problem is no one knows what it is and there are darn few volunteers to find out among the big players. One thing is certain, in the future, ink on paper will only be a small part of a “newspaper’s” distribution model.

So, today’s post is from noted new-media observer and critic, Dan Gillmor, and Eleven Things I’d Do If I Ran a News Organizaton.
Example:

2. We would invite our audience to participate in the journalism process, in a variety of ways that included crowdsourcing, audience blogging, wikis and many other techniques. We’d make it clear that we’re not looking for free labor — and will work to create a system that rewards contributors beyond a pat on the back — but want above all to promote a multi-directional flow of news and information in which the audience plays a vital role.

But my personal favorite:

6. We would refuse to do stenography and call it journalism. If one faction or party to a dispute is lying, we would say so, with the accompanying evidence. If we learned that a significant number of people in our community believed a lie about an important person or issue, we would make it part of an ongoing mission to help them understand the truth.

Which seems to me not a New Rule at all, but a fundamental definition of what it means to be a journalist, period. The fact that we have to “reinvent” this is a sign of just how far mainstream news organizations have fallen from their core business in the quest for higher profits in the 1990s and to fight for survival in the 2000’s. And yes, I am looking across 6th Avenue South when I write this.

Gone forever? Closed for overhaul? We don’t know because management isn’t telling its paying and non-paying users anything. In fact, unless you had read one specific post in one thread in the forums over the last two weeks you wouldn’t have heard anything about it from management at all.

Head over to Aww, Martha!

Update 11:00 a.m. 9/1/09
Statement from the Clinton Herald

Today, CNHI, the Clinton Herald’s parent company, shut down the community forum software on its newspapers’ Web sites, leaving it up to each newspaper to decide whether to continue to offer forums as well as administration and platform responsibilities.

After careful consideration and much discussion, we at the Herald have decided to discontinue offering community forums on our Web site at this time.

We weighed many factors and this decision was not made lightly. Although we will no longer be offering the forums on this site, we will continue to offer local, state and national stories, breaking news and photos.

We are working to bring back the “Old Clinton Photos” thread that was popular on our site, as well.

Our site also will continue to evolve and we invite you to come back often to see what we have to offer.

More later.

Yes, we have been notified that our forums no longer will be Hey Martha forums as of Sept. 1. We currently are looking at our options concerning the hosting of the site. We know our readers like the forums and we are doing our best to make sure that continues. I’ll let you know more as those decisions are made.
Charlene Bielema
Herald Editor

The Herald is owned by Community Newspapers Holdings Inc. a Birmingham, Alabama-based concern that owns a metric buttload of small market newspapers. As of now, it looks like they have moved to a new content-management and/or hosting service.

The original posting in the thread was cross-posted from the Norman, OK Norman Transcript. It appears that the Transcript will be moving to a more community-based blogging and aggregation model. Something that has been talked about as a new business model for newspapers. See Jeff Jarvis’ blog buzzfeed. Mr. Jarvis just gave a rather compelling presentation of a very similar business model at an Aspen Institute forum.

Regardless of the fate of the Hey, Martha! forums, I’ve been wanting to get some serious hands-on time with the really cool-looking website development and management tools from squarespace.com for a month or so now. We’ll this is a good chance. I’ve set up a community site called Aww, Martha!. If the Herald pulls the plug, there will be a place for people to gather. It is a $50 a month hit, so its permanence depends on a couple of factors: a) whether it gets used at all and b) whether it is needed.

In the meantime, feel free to play around and post some stuff. Membership is required but totally free and privacy will be respected. Aww, Martha!