MMM #116 - MSM, Still in The Wilderness

     As far as I can tell, the media is still in the wilderness that exists between the old broken business model and the yet to be developed (or even semi-articulated) way of making the news business work.

     It's been eight months since an experiment by three of the biggest names in news and online content shut down an experiment called "Living Stories"

     The idea was you could tell your "page" on the program to keep track of whatever stories you selected, and they would automatically be updated.     

     The experiment was conducted by The New York Times, The Washington Post and Google...a Triumvirate powerful enough to have made it a likely answer to the online journalism question. But it wasn't. The program was handed free to web developers to use it as they please, and Living Stories was no more.

     Just weeks from now, The New York Times is supposed to start charging some heavy users of their web site for access...The Wall Street Journal has already done so.

      I have yet to hear of any broadcast journalism outlets considering the same thing.

     It's not the first time the Times has ventured into the pay to play territory. Their experiment with charging for their premier columnists angered the writers and the readers, and never attracted enough subscribers to make it worthwhile. They abandoned "Times Select" in 2007, eons ago in Internet time.

     In January, we'll find out if their plan---casual users will be allowed free access, heavy users will be charged either per-story or a monthly all-access fee---will be more acceptable. Still no word on how much the paper will charge. They're apparently attracting 20-million unique hits, a number that is sure to drop--or plummet---once there's a fee charged.



[PLUS: a mea culpa from the NPR head for the handling of the Juan Williams affair.]



[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of this blog]