Doc Searls makes a lot of good points on the issues the newspaper business has with the web - and notes that they have the value proposition wrong on new/old stuff:

That division is roughly between what I call "the news" and "the olds". The irony here is that papers charge for the news and give away the olds in print (the olds being fishwrap and recycling fodder), while they do exactly the opposite online. So they compete with themselves in both areas. Specifically, by giving away daily editorial online, they undermine street and subscription sales; and by charging for archival editorial, they remove their goods from the vast reference library that Google and other search engines have become. What papers that do this are saying, essentially, is that the news has sales value in itself (instead serving as free bait for advertising - a model borrowed from commercial broadcasting and all those free papers piled up outside coffee shops and restaurants), while the olds is worth $2.50 per story.

There are researchers who will pay that $2.50, but very few. Why the news media thinks it's worth getting a few nickels for that (while the new stuff that we care about is free) is a mystery. What they ought to be doing is outlined above: Make the old stuff available (so that Google, et. al. can give them more authority) - and use AdSense on both the old and new stuff to bring in some actual revenue.

Like the RIAA and the MPAA, the newspaper guys are stuck in a different era, and are having trouble finding their way out.

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