I’ve spent the past couple of weeks working on a piece about newspapers’ plans to charge for online content. It’s a topic that has been covered extensively in the last month or so, particularly after Newsday and Hearst both announced plans to institute some sort of pay model in the near future.

The premise of such a discussion is, of course, that by generating revenue from readers (whether through micropayments or subscriptions, or by offering premium content or services) newspapers can raise enough money to make up for the rapid decline in print–and now online–advertising revenue. Newspaper reporters can take heart. From among the handful of executives I spoke to, I heard a range of interesting ideas and a willingness to take risks and innovate; they don’t all regard online advertising as a fad.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t make reading new media specialist Clay Shirky’s latest missive, comparing the internet’s enormous impact on publishing to the invention of the Gutenberg press in the 15th century, any more palatable. It’s a long piece, but here are a couple of highlights:

The curious thing about the various plans hatched in the ’90s is that they were, at base, all the same plan: “Here’s how we’re going to preserve the old forms of organization in a world of cheap perfect copies!” The details differed, but the core assumption behind all imagined outcomes (save the unthinkable one) was that the organizational form of the newspaper, as a general-purpose vehicle for publishing a variety of news and opinion, was basically sound, and only needed a digital facelift. As a result, the conversation has degenerated into the enthusiastic grasping at straws, pursued by skeptical responses.

“The Wall Street Journal has a paywall, so we can too!” (Financial information is one of the few kinds of information whose recipients don’t want to share.) “Micropayments work for iTunes, so they will work for us!” (Micropayments only work where the provider can avoid competitive business models.) “The New York Times should charge for content!” (They’ve tried, with QPass and later TimesSelect.) “Cook’s Illustrated and Consumer Reports are doing fine on subscriptions!” (Those publications forgo ad revenues; users are paying not just for content but for unimpeachability.) “We’ll form a cartel!” (…and hand a competitive advantage to every ad-supported media firm in the world.)

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

[...]Print media does much of society’s heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone — covering every angle of a huge story — to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This coverage creates benefits even for people who aren’t newspaper readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?

I don’t know. Nobody knows. We’re collectively living through 1500, when it’s easier to see what’s broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen.

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (Clay Shirky via Mediabistro)

When I interviewed casino mogul Sheldon Adelson a few years ago for All the Money in the World he was among the world’s richest dozen people. Between 2004 and 2006 his net worth increased by almost $1 million an hour, from $3 billion in 2004 to $23.6 billion in 2006.

How times have changed. According to Forbes’ latest rich list, Adelson’s net worth has fallen by $22 billion in the past 12 months to $3.4 billion. He ‘s now 178th among the world’s billionaires. Hardly a pauper. But still, if all things are relative, it must have been a pretty bumpy year.

The Guardian has a nice roundup of the main points from Forbes World’s Billionaires list, which was released yesterday. If you’d like a bit of inspiration in these hard times, you might be interested in Forbes’ slide show of the ten biggest billionaire gainers of 2008. Or, if you’re more inclined towards schadenfreude, you might prefer the notable drop offs instead.

Meanwhile, Mediaweek reports that John Stewart’s evisceration of CNBC’s financial reporting is the most streamed web clip of the year so far with over 1.3 million views (via Mediabistro):

UPDATE: Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, Stewart gives Cramer a thorough dressing down:

Snapped on my cell phone last week while I was out and about in New York:

A man walking by Port Authority with a cat on his head.

Here’s a closer look.

Also, a man in a top hat sketching on canvas on the Q train late at night.

Here’s what he was drawing.

My first review for The Stage:

Nobody questioned whether, after a 46-year hiatus and at the age of 71, Jane Fonda would be able to handle a return to Broadway. Far from it, her starring role in Moises Kaufmann’s 33 Variations has been one of the most eagerly anticipated openings of 2009. And for good reason. Fonda is just one of the myriad highlights of this witty, laugh out loud drama-comedy about a woman’s obsession with one of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s master works.

More here.

PS: Newyorkology has a fine roundup of reviews, also.

New York-based Scotsman David Galbraith ponders the relative merits of being an employee in America and France. His ruminations struck a particular chord after I heard recently about a Citi exec of more than 20 years, who was fired with no warning or severance:

In the US being fired means no notice and being escorted off the premises with two months severance if you are lucky. If you are an executive with a history of litigation you normally get more from a board, because there is a risk the company will incur costs (I have been in board meeting this spineless immoral stance has been the attitude). It means that for a year or so you can pay to keep your healthcare. After that, you are pretty much screwed.

In France you will get 3 months warning, and 2 years (23 months) at 60 – 70 % of your salary up to $90K. Your pension will continue to be paid and you will get free healthcare. And after 2 years the healthcare will continue and you will not starve. You will not have mortgage payments which are more than 3 times your previous salary, because that is illegal and you will be in a minority if you use a credit rather than a debit card. You will not need to get into debt to get a credit score, and you won’t have much of a student loan. The very best schools (Henry IV) are free and so is university (although the universities are sub par compared to the Grand Ecoles or places like INSEAD).

For the downside, read on here.