“Newspapers never made money on ‘news,’” Hal Varian said.

The success of the Newspaper Format was its ability to deliver Serious News to people who were NOT interested in Serious News, but rather bought the paper for the Comics, Sports Scores, Movie Listings, Classified Ads and Coupons. Of course, that exposure to Serious News was most often peripheral (a glance at the headlines) and many newspapers never really actually did Serious News at all. "We" (meaning Everybody, not just you and me) were never all that well-informed, but the ever-growing, ever-more-fragmenting Media Landscape makes it easier than ever to avoid Serious News (and all manners of Unpleasant Truth), and to give the impression of 'being informed' by placing yourself in the center of a selected echo chamber. The only way to support Professional Journalism in the future (and even more importantly, to get Serious News to people who need to but don't want to see it) is to piggyback it on something everybody wants. Serious News never was a very good 'profit center' and never will be, which is why 'non-profit news gathering' may be necessary, but that still doesn't get it in front of anybody's eyes.

Oh, this is fascinating. I don't think they've hit on anything yet that hasn't been identified within the industry already, but at least they're thinking more analytically about than anyone else has yet. The crux:

Publishers would be overjoyed to stop buying newsprint—if the new readers they are gaining for their online editions were worth as much to advertisers as the previous ones they are losing in print. Here is a crucial part of the Google analysis: they certainly will be... soon readers will again pay for subscriptions, and online display ads will become valuable.

I'm so not convinced. This will be true for some media outlets (the biggies).

Has this been on the blue? It should be; it's always a hot topic and this is news.

It's not really true that nobody ever made money on news. News was originally sought after be investors so they could predict the markets which were affected by world events.

"originally?" Not sure what you mean - what historical period are you describing? News has been powered by lots of different interests at different times and places.

One concept I did not see mentioned in that article is personal networks. I often find more news value in Mecha's 3-point updates than on my personalized Google News page.

I'm talking about the wire services, like Reuters.

Ah,Reuters - his deal was with the Stock Exchange, so I see what you're saying, and that certainly gave investors an advantage until everyone had the same technology. That's sort of a subtopic in news reporting history, though. Businesses have always profited from news, and from having a news advantage, even before the telegraph, but I wouldn't say business interests have been a single or even major driver of newsgathering and reporting.

not major, I meant majority