Since my blog about the “stripper story” was such a hit (not) I thought I’d tackle another popular subject: charging for online news.

I see it every day: People complaining about having to pay to read news stories online. People complaining that news stories should not be posted to social media platforms if they aren’t free. I see it, folks. Believe me, I see it. And I’m going to talk about it.

But before we get into all that, let me tell you a story:

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (or the 1960s to be exact). a group of college universities scattered across the United States and under the direction of a little-known government agency known as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) got together and invented something called ARAPNET (Advanced Research Projects Network), which essentially created the functionality of what we now call the internet.

Then in 1989 computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, or the “look” of what we think of as the internet. When you log onto your favorite website, you owe a debt of gratitude to the founders of ARAPNET and Tim Berners-Lee.

The popularity of the World Wide Web began to spread in the 1990s and newspapers finally glommed onto the fact they were facing a serious threat from this digital upstart. But they were slow to do anything about it.

Journalists are hideous early adopters. Most were still marveling over email in the mid-’90s. They didn’t take the web seriously because the economic models were so awful – pay by the minute, pay by the click, the cost of access outrageously high. Surely nobody would bother with that.

But people did bother with it – in growing numbers – and before you knew it newspapers were being left in the dust by the quick and nimble World Wide Web. Worse, some amateurs online, who came to be known as “bloggers,” were sometimes beating journalism at its own game, publishing information, photos and even video long before the legitimate media got their hands on those resources or even knew what to do with them.

What resulted was a mad scramble by newspapers to become “relevant” by joining the digital revolution and publishing their content online. It made sense: Journalists were already the gold standard in collecting information. Master a few new technologies and they could become the gold standard in presenting that content, too.

And in their rush for audience, newspapers did a stupid thing: They gave away their content for free.

It was a longish and undignified strategy, that scramble for online relevance. But it worked. I know because I was part of it. I watched page views soar from a piddling 2.5 million per month to 10 million per month at its highest point.

The unintended consequence was that readers expected news to be “free.” Newspapers didn’t give a fig about that, because they had their print products to bring in the dollars. Lord knows the internet didn’t. Digital dollars comprise a tiny fraction of the overall revenue picture. You simply cannot sell enough ads online to support an operation of a newspaper’s side. There must be other sources of money as well.

It wasn’t until circulation managers began to notice that people were canceling their subscriptions that alarm bells began to ring. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why. If you can get something for free, would you continue to pay for it? Of course not. People aren’t stupid. Realizing they could get much of the same content for free online, they began canceling their print subscriptions. When circulation declined, newspapers couldn’t charge advertisers as much for their ads, because fewer eyeballs were looking at those ads. It was a vicious death spiral that had only one outcome.

Let me pause here a moment and emphasize something: We were talking about the life or death of news. It’s really that simple. Charge for news online or go out of business.

So some online news providers began charging a fee for their content – which failed spectacularly. There were many other sources of news online that didn’t charge a fee, so readers simply went to those sites. This took place in fits and starts through the 2000s, with newspapers like The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal alternately starting and dropping what came to be known as “paywalls.”

Segue to today. In 2017 it seems many online news providers have settled on the reality of instituting some kind of pay-for-news fee, much to the outrage of readers who feel everything online should be free (short of purchasing an actual product, like on Amazon).

So. Here’s where the talking part starts.

Why do newspapers charge a fee for online news? Because if they don’t, they could go out of business.

These are the hard realities of the times: In the past newspapers relied on these sources of income for their survival:

1. subscriptions

2. classified ads

3. display ads

4. rack sales.

Times have changed. Subscriptions are down due to the web. Classified ads have nosedived because of websites like Craigslist and Facebook Markets. Many of the best display ad customers – the real estate companies and car dealers – have started their own websites and scaled back ad purchases. Rack sales continue, but as reading declines, so too have over-the-counter sales.

These realities affect not only newspapers but magazines and book publishers. The entire print industry is suffering.

Not only that, but local TV stations are starting to feel the hurt. New technologies in streaming and mobile services are causing viewers to bypass their legacy TV stations for online venue. It’s only a matter of time before television as we have always known it will have to come up with new ways to pay for its business. Fees may be one solution.

Why don’t newspapers let advertising pay for the cost of news, like TV stations? Because you’re comparing apples to Lamborghinis. A TV station that offers 24 hours of programming may provide only two hours of news content. The rest is entertainment, for which there is a greater demand, more ad revenue and more ad dollars. That ad revenue can be used to subsidize the costs of running a news operation. My friends who work for TV stations tell me if the station had to rely on revenue generated by its news operation, it would shut down. Newspapers do not have a preponderance of “entertainment programming.” They live and die off their news operations.

What about websites like CNN and The Huffington Post? They seem to survive without charging for content. News sources like CNN and MSNBC have vast resources to fall back on, entertainment product offerings and network subsidies for which their is no analog in the print news world. Take a look at an hour of 24-hour news network content. It typically consists of 5 or 10 minutes of news followed by 50 to 55 minutes of opinion, editorial, and other filler – aka entertainment. In fact, some academics argue that 24-hour news networks have transformed news into entertainment, at some cost of accuracy, of course. Could newspapers do that? Possibly, but readers don’t seem to want it. They seem to want some place they can go to for the final, trustworthy word on what’s happening in the world around them.

The Huffington Post and similar sites are like that deer you hit on the interstate back in ’97 – a bloodbath. They hemorrhage money and rely on the deep pockets of investors to maintain operations, a model that cannot go on forever.

Facebook and twitter are free. Why are newspapers posting their stories on Facebook and twitter, then requiring people to pay to read them? Newspapers aren’t posting their stories to Facebook and twitter. They post LINKS to their stories on Facebook and twitter, which then take the reader back to the newspaper’s website, where a subscription is required. This is a standard business model. Every retailer in the world posts links to its products on social media and hopes customers will purchase them. It is no different than walking into a farmer’s market and eyeballing the tomatoes, squash, corn, and snap beans. Would you expect to help yourself to those goodies without paying the poor farmer for his labors?

In the end, I personally hope this situation is rectified to everybody’s satisfaction. As a creator, I want the maximum number of eyeballs on my work. I understand the desire to get something for nothing. Believe me, I spend a lot of my time trying to figure out ways to avoid paying extra if possible.

Right now there is no good and easy way for newspapers to survive without charging a fee for their websites. That may not always be true, and believe me, greater minds than mine are working on it. I hope they are successful.

Meanwhile, if you have any brainstorms, feel free to let me know and I will pass them on to the powers that be.

As usual, these thoughts are my own. I do not speak for the Daily News or GateHouse Media.

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