On the Editors’ weblog, the director of the World Editors’ Forum, Bertrand Pecquerie, writes…

"I consider an opportunity was missed in the struggle for the newspaper industry to reinvent a new business model. And I hope this missed opportunity will serve as a lesson in other countries as in the US.

What’s the issue? It seems rather clever that the New York Times finally choose to introduce new "pay" service. But this shift would have a totally different significance if other national newspapers - such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and why not USA Today - did the same thing at the same rate at the same moment.

Immediately more than 50% of all op-ed pages produced in America would be available behind paywalls and op-ed page addicted readers - and many bloggers using these sections as punching balls - would have to choose: to pay or not to pay, to be an insider or a news refugee!"

You want to make your readers news refugees? But online, news refugees don’t have to walk far to get their fill. And aren’t you also advocating some kind of cabal? A cabal between organisations that should be competing online, if not physically? A formal, organised cabal in a US newspaper market that has been notable, for some time, for the cosy monopolies it is largely made up of?

Oh dear.

So let’s ignore the "news refugees" throwaway, as Bertrand’s obviously not talking about news - he’s talking about columnists and op-ed pages. And, just as the web’s not short of free sources of news, most of us also know the web’s not running short of commentary. Even if these four newspapers chose to go skip off together behind a paywall there would be plenty of it left, not just in the US, but from a few quite well-known titles on this side of the pond as well…

The underlying thrust of Bertrand’s argument is that online commentary is derivative, feeding off the print columnists. Some is, but it would be wrong to say it all is. After all, while many bloggers, for instance, are sniping reactively at columnists for ideological or other reasons, a consistent feature of the last few years’ of blogging has been a steady stream of reputation-stripping fact checking, aimed at everyone from local print op-ed writers to national TV anchors, from writers with far greater knowledge of a subject than the pros or who, worse, have a greater appetite for research.

Those bloggers aren’t sitting back and paying compliments, back-handed or not, to old media, by meekly chewing over its agenda as dictated daily by the thump of the paper on the mat. They’re biting back, pointing out the bullshit and calling an awful lot of second rate op-ed for what it is. And some simply aren’t interacting with old media at all - they’re coming up with new stuff, day in, day out.

So will people pay for the old media’s views? The New York Times’ stuff is better than most, so the paper might get away with it, although I’ve a feeling the archives might be a bigger draw than the op-ed pages. They’re also promoting it heavily, and smartly. But the visibility of their columnists will dive online, and we won’t learn the implications of that for a while. Could the NYT lose its influence, because the influential are online, and online reading something else?

While we wait to find out, old media should beware Pecquerie’s approach. His sentiments are shared by many in the industry, by people who see the digital age but don’t understand what has already happened to their business online. Bigger blogs than this will point this out. But since the problem is that the industry is not really paying attention to what’s going on out here, can we really hope for any improvement?

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