The economic problems facing ABC News and CBS News in many ways mirror those faced by newspapers, which have been similarly afflicted by a drop in advertising revenue. The reaction — severe cuts in personnel and other costs — also looks to be the same.

But can you shrink your way to prosperity? Andrew Heyward, the former president of CBS News who is now a news media consultant (NBC News is one client), said of the ABC cuts: “The real issue after this is what is going to drive growth? How do you generate more profit? And this doesn’t address that.”

» via The New York Times

greggyour:

“News no longer breaks, it tweets - demonstrating the efficiency, momentum, and influence of the human network.”

The New York Times announced Wednesday that it intended to charge frequent readers for access to its Web site, a step being debated across the industry that nearly every major newspaper has so far feared to take.

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site.

But executives of The New York Times Company said they could not yet answer fundamental questions about the plan, like how much it would cost or what the limit would be on free reading. They stressed that the amount of free access could change with time, in response to economic conditions and reader demand.

» via The New York Times

Nearly half of the users of Google News skim the headlines at the news aggregator site without clicking through to newspaper websites, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

The findings by Outsell Inc. appear likely to provide further ammunition to publishers such as News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch who have criticized Google and other aggregators for linking to stories without sharing ad revenue.

Google, responding to the criticism in the past from media tycoon Murdoch and others, has said it drives “about 100,000 clicks every minute” to media websites, generating ad revenue for the news outlets.

Outsell analyst Ken Doctor said in a statement that “among the aggregators, Google’s effect on the newspaper industry is particularly striking.

» via Yahoo! News

But Krishna Bharat, a distinguished researcher at Google who works on the search giant’s online news projects, said there are plenty of examples of longer stories appearing on the Web. “The Wikipedia entry on the earthquake in Haiti is probably the longest piece out there, and because of the format it’s a living story that keeps on growing,” he said.

“Is that journalism?” quipped Buckman, given that Wikipedia is made up of user-generated content.

Another panelist, Ken Doctor, answered “No, it’s data. It isn’t journalism.” Doctor, a news industry analyst with Outsell, said a big issue for readers is figuring out what content sources to trust.

» via InternetNews.com

News comes from more and more outlets, about which readers know less and less.

Publishers and broadcasters have always called on freelance journalists. But a generation ago, if they used material from another organization, it was usually limited to a handful of large, well-known and respected ones like The Associated Press or Reuters. With established newsrooms shrinking, a raft of smaller news outlets have cropped up in the last few years, selling or simply giving news reports to the traditional media — groups like ProPublica, Global Post, Politico and Kaiser Health News.

“There are more pressures than ever to acquire content from outside sources, and there are going to be even more going forward,” said Alan D. Mutter, a media consultant and former newspaper editor who blogs about the news business. That means that despite declining resources, newsrooms, he said, “have to get better at due diligence in terms of who this provider is,” and at explaining it to their audiences.

» via The New York Times

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. appears close to announcing that the paper will begin charging for access to its website, according to people familiar with internal deliberations. After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

One personal friend of Sulzberger said a final decision could come within days, and a senior newsroom source agreed, adding that the plan could be announced in a matter of weeks. (Apple’s tablet computer is rumored to launch on January 27, and sources speculate that Sulzberger will strike a content partnership for the new device, which could dovetail with the paid strategy.) It will likely be months before the Times actually begins to charge for content, perhaps sometime this spring. Executive Editor Bill Keller declined to comment. Times spokesperson Diane McNulty said: “We’ll announce a decision when we believe that we have crafted the best possible business approach. No details till then.”

» via New York

Doug Hardy, an associate editor and Internet supervisor for The Journal Inquirer in Manchester, Conn., wanted to increase page views on its Web site.

Mr. Hardy had heard about SeeClickFix.com, a local advocacy Web site that lets users write about issues to encourage communication between residents and local government. SeeClickFix users post a complaint about problems that occur within a set of boundaries on a Google Map, like graffiti at a bus stop or potholes on a busy street, and the site communicates the problem to the appropriate government agency and marks the problem on the map.

Users can comment on the issue or label it resolved. Government agencies can post on the site to respond to residents, and journalists can use the site to communicate with readers and see which issues are most pressing to people.

Ben Berkowitz, the chief executive of SeeClickFix, said the tool went beyond government: “Anyone can be held accountable: a business, nonprofit, even a private citizen.”

» via The New York Times