Michael Gawenda was on ABC 774 radio this morning talking about his lecture this evening about news and newspapers.
He had some really interesting points about how the web is awash with commentry and analysis and because of this that's not what newspapers should be focusing on. He was also suggesting newspapers can still exist in print in some form, but they need to start making money from their online content. I think perhaps for some specialised information some people might pay, but I think newpapers have made a mistake. The thinking in the past was, let's get news online, make it free, get a large readership, then make money out of that at some point in the future (of course now they do have ads). But once you put something on the web and make it free, then people expect it to be free, and you're not going to succeed if you suddenly start charging money for it. People will go elsewhere.