Scheer’s proposal a trap Joe Wikert: Dan Gillmor has it right. The solution for the newspaper industry’s woes isn’t to “embargo their news content from the free Internet for a brief period – say 24 hours.” . . . Even if the newspaper industry could band together and pull this off, what would it lead to? It probably results in a boatload of online traffic shifting from the newspaper sites to other news-oriented sites. If
An utterly numbnutty idea Jeff Jarvis: . . . [Scheer’s proposal is] an utterly numbnutty idea. . . Uh, counselor, you assume that you can still control the news. You can’t. That’s the whole point of the internet. Others can easily step into whatever void there is and report what you don’t report; you’re only opening the door for them. Oh, but they don’t have what the papers have? Look again: It’s worth cataloguing just
A proposal that might save newspapers Peninsula Press Club: Peter Scheer . . . has come up with an idea that might save the newspaper business. In a commentary posted on the CFAC Web site, he suggests that newspapers keep news stories off of their free Web sites for 24 hours in order to make their print (and paid Web) editions more valuable. A few years ago, newspaper executives who were trying to develop their
Flabbergasted Steve Fox: Every now and then, you read a piece where you have to stop, take a breath and then go back and make sure you actually just read that. Peter Scheer, billed as a lawyer, journalist and executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, columnizes in the San Francisco ?Chronicle that newspapers and wire services, to help protect their collective bottom lines, should embargo their news content from the “free Internet” for
A bad approach to the problem Bert Carelli: Peter Scheer, Executive Director of the California First Amendment Coalition, authored a provocative opinion piece in yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle, suggesting that newspapers should raise the value of subscription services by enforcing an industry-wide 24-hour embargo on news content before it is made accessible through the free portals and search engines. Scheer says that even the most successful newspapers have trouble selling online advertising that covers even