Tackling the paywall debate for community newspapers

Someone asked last week for a summary of online articles about the pros and cons of paywalls.  Nothing is more relevant right now in Texas community journalism:  Are our newspapers going to charge for access to their websites, or should they remain free in hopes that they will generate additional advertising revenue?  There is no easy answer to this. 

Tale of dueling editors is a reminder of the early days of Texas community journalism

We do love to moan about the pressures of the news business.

Come to one of our workshops, or maybe to a TPA meeting, and you'll hear lots of talk about the problems of life in a newsroom.

Most of them deal with stress and time and money.  And listen long enough, and you'll hear some whines about the good old days when life was simpler.

New program will give you a writing coach for a day

Writing is a skill, and improving writing is like improving any other skill.

When measuring site traffic, one number isn't enough

Media managers have long had access to simple statistics about their product's consumption. Newspaper publishers, for example, have relatively easy access to circulation figures. But more detailed information about consumption habits traditionally has only been available via extensive research, often from outside providers.

Newspapers experiment with charging for premium content

Two news items about our business from last week:

Workshops on innovation and ethics open to community journalists

Community journalists, as announced at our latest workshop you're being invited by the Schieffer School of Journalism to participate in an exciting two-day event at the School featuring one of the country's top journalism minds.

Are free classifieds the answer for newspapers?

You have already read Andrew Chavez's great piece here on this site about the impact of Craigslist on newspaper classifieds. Now check out these three articles from NAA that tell the stories of three newspapers that have gone to free classifieds:

The free mentality of the Internet, and a hybrid alternative

Software developer Jesse Grosjean wanted to try an experiment with one of his most recent creations - an applications for the iPhone called WriteRoom.

News websites can learn from Wikipedia

Some have argued that the story was a product of necessity — newspapers had a fixed news hole to fill, and newscasts only had so much airtime. Context was often sacrificed as a result, because with a fixed amount of space, only the newest information is fit to print. But in the online era, there is no news hole.