Projo Subterranean Homepage News

Vin Crosbie's latest MRI of news orgs on Feb. 20, Wasting Ink, Beating a Dead Horse, hosts an interesting conversation about newspapers, news orgs' Web sites and revenue in comments that deserves a wider airing.

But since then, he notes on Twitter:

Herd Instinct: Newsday's decision 2charge online may start causing dinosaur migration towards that cliff. Hearst next? http://bit.ly/sxYVW

(How will advertisers feel about barring the door to their messages?)

Vin decided to fantasize ideas that are even worse, and invites other gallows humorists to join in:

Holding contest 2devise stupidest biz model 2suggest 2 panicky Rip Van Winkles of print n/paper companies: #printieplan about 24 hours ago... Vin Crosbie

See entries from fellow Twitterers who put #printieplan in their tweets, as assembled at hashtags/tag/printieplan. Or, even easier, check out this Twitter search for #printieplan.

The latest from Vin as I type this:

Charge newspaper printed edition readers micropayments per page. Hope Walt Isaacson and Alan Mutter approve! #printieplan

This suggestion gave me a chuckle. My ;CueCat still sits by my computer.

vincrosbie: Allow only owners of ;CueCat scanners to access newspaper Web sites for free. #printieplan

To enter your idea, sign up at Twitter and check out Kristen Worth's hashtag primer. Sample:

...in order to get tracked via a hash tag, you need to opt-in and follow http://twitter.com/hashtags.

Once you're following Hashtags, every time you make a post in Twitter and tag it with a hash mark like so: #iPhone, it will then show up as a real-time post on http://www.Hashtags.org...

Use #printieplan to get your idea into the meme.

If this is all too much, leave your idea in comments. I'll get the best of them in there for you.

I have an idea I could enter, but Isaacson might like it too much: Make obits free, write as long as you like, put in pictures, video, audio, fond memories -- but charge people to read them. Ouch.

I've touched on this earlier: Micropayments: Nickel-and-diming the news but, for what it's worth, I think putting up a pay wall while people are economizing is a terrible idea: even Doc Searls is trying to save money by dropping his TV feed.

How many news stories are you willing to pay to read for a few minutes at how many different sites? And how am I going to link to them, not knowing who subscribes to what? And what would I pay to subscribe to? What would be left?

An informed society that comprises only those who can afford to buy the news leaves behind a much larger failed society.

Related:

The micropayments argument: do we want to turn the web into Zimbabwe? in the Guardian.

C. Shirky vs. W. Isaacson on small payments and newspapers

More about Twitter last night from Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee:

Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee Discuss Twitter at the | Comedy Central Insider Blog.

How come the middle-aged talking heads in the mainstream media will never cop to being late to a trend? While they're going on and on about Twitter, we young people have already moved on to writing messages on mini-chalkboards and sending them to our friends via bike messenger.

Twitter, like Facebook, often makes me ask in wonder, "Who knew Big Brother would be voluntary?"

Twitter lurkers read between the lines about A's frustration with his wife, who Ms. H is exchanging massages with, and notice who only points to blog posts and tweets that mention him.

One thing you can't hide
Is when you're crippled inside.