The Evolving Newsroom

I can never resist a bit of doomsaying from Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget. This time he's arguing that within ten years newspaper circulation and advertising revenue will be a quarter what it is now:

Why? Because:

• As circulations and ad revenue continue to fall, print economies-of-scale will reverse, cutting further into already shrinking print margins.
  
• As "green business" practices take hold, a new generation of consumers will come to view the newspaper industry as a horrifically wasteful polluter that eats forests, gobbles fuel and electricity, and farts untold amounts of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere--all to deliver information that might have been interesting yesterday.
  
• A generation of newspaper ad salespeople and ad sales buyers will gradually retire or quit, and advertisers will increasingly ask themselves why they are spending billions on ads they have no idea whether anyone looks at.
• As financial and environmental pressures increase and a better grasp of reality sets in, more papers will opt to do what the Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, did last weekend: Shut down their print businesses, fire a third of their staff, and put what's left online.

As ever, Blodget sparks some lively debate and the comments are worth a read.

There was me thinking the WSJ was going to bring its whole site out from behind the paywall. But no, so far only opinion, editorials, commentary and video. And they're still running a discount campaign enticing new subscribers.

Silicon Alley Insider thinks they may not go much further. "With this hybrid solution, the organization's columnists can now go head to head with the blogosphere (and the NYT editorial page), without giving away the farm."

Either way, the WSJ personalisation offering for subscribers has appeal. You get to track 10 companies - stock quotes and stories, 10 industries, the columnists you like and news in 10 areas (world, business, technology etc) - delivered online and by email.