Other innovative services have filled a void for the consumer looking for the paper look and feel, but in an electronic version there is a BC comp[any named Newspaper Direct that fills that void. Others such as Canwest also sell you their paper in the electronic version as well as many others.

Thr issue right now is that readers are not really willing to dish out moneyu for online content as they were for the newspapers. Also advertisers do not pay as much for online marketing as they did for print.

Some newspapers here in Toronto are basicaly purchassed only for their publicity content (Toronto Sun) more so then their reporting.

Just my two cents

Canadian newspaper and media companies missed it, with RSS.

“They” never got it. Still don’t. “They” don’t understand their own business model, audience aggregation, on the net.

“They” don’t understand it’s my (our) news, not theirs. They don’t see any value in me aggreating my news, from, or better, on their platform and syndicating it.

“They” produce and re-purpose more content, in a commodity market. Then, wonder why there is limited value.

“They” gave away ‘classifieds’. They don’t understand how to monetize ‘free’!

“They”, media companies, which own papers, refused to invest, in or create new business models. Transaction facilitation might be one! Could have been, when ‘they’ had an audience!

Their response to dwindling revenue, cut costs, people, facilities. How does a business grow, by cutting production? Margins may,short term. Business does not!

Independent journalism, an oxymoron, is dead, too. Locked down, like the borders into Gaza, by vested interests, with a web of contacts to support the power of their will, from there to Yonge and Bloor!

Today’s reportage and analysis is agenda driven propaganda. Independent journalism long evisorated by the toxic atmosphere of ‘regulated’, government approved, media monopoly.

Compromised, by vested third party think tank expertise. Manifested, on a local level, by non analytical press conference boosterism, masquardering as journalism.

A neat and tidy, controlled, complex, ‘information vertical’ organized and supported by a shared mutually, vested, beneficial will!

Truth, trust, and transparency is not ‘their’ will! Media and automotive companies, banks, oops I digress!

Perhaps the collapse of the newspaper business, if there ever was such a business, is a metaphor for the disintegration of monopoly?
Hope so!

Personally, I’d be more than happy to pay $10/month if my local paper (and one of the national ones) would provide categorized RSS feeds of all of their articles. It’s possible to get a limited selection of articles now by RSS, but it would be fantastic if such a service was made available – it doesn’t have to be a completely separate business model, either – the papers could implement such a subscription system without taking away from their other sources of income.