San Francisco columnist Dan Lazarus has responded to bloggers comments about his column calling for newspapers to band together to charge for their online content.
Apparently The Freditor and MediaShift weren't the only ones to take him to task. In fact, he doesn't mention us directly.
More to the point, he still doesn't get it.
For one thing, newspapers' print business is supported by advertising, not by charging for the paper itself. Many newspapers are now distributed free, and even when they do charge they still lose more money on paper distribution then they do on online distribution.
Here's the thing: Online distribution is vastly cheaper and more efficient than chopping down trees, printing up thousands of copies, and delivering them to houses and newsstands. So if the Chronicle thinks it's enough better than the free San Francisco Examiner to charge $.50 a copy, that's fine. If the Chron thinks it's that much better online, too, then it can try and charge there too. If people think it's worth it, then they will pay.
But asking for anti-trust exemption to allow collusion and price fixing is both pathetic and nasty. What's next, forcing Craigslist to charge for its personal ads?
Oh, and here's the best take on the issue, from the Chronicle's consistently hilarious Don Assmussen's Bad Reporter comic.
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