An anti-trust exemption for newspapers?

The brightest minds in media have yet to figure out a way to sustain journalism deep into the Internet age.

With an op-ed in today's ProJo, Joel Brinkley offers this concept:

When the [newspaper Web] sites were considered technological curiosities, there was no thought of charging people to use them. By the time papers realized that they should be charging, it was too late. No one wanted to be the first paper to charge, given that nearly all of the other papers, and other online news sources worldwide, were free. Several papers tried charging, but most backed off.

Now, here’s my idea: The newspaper industry should ask the Justice Department for an anti-trust exemption that would let publishers collaborate on a decision to begin charging for their Web sites. No paper would have to charge, and each paper could determine its own price. But if most papers in a region — San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, for example — began charging for Web access at more or less the same time, many readers would probably subscribe.

“It’s an intriguing idea,” John Sturm, president of the Newspaper Association of America, told me. “I do not recall hearing that notion before.”

Certainly, as Sturm noted, readers could find some of what the newspaper offers elsewhere. Sports scores at espn.com. Political news at politico.com. But then, the onus on each paper would be the same one that has prevailed since the first newspapers were published in Germany 500 years ago: to provide unique, exclusive content that readers crave and cannot get anywhere else.

This seems like a long shot, not least because of the contemporary ethos in which a premium (a non-premium, actually) is placed on the distribution of information. Then again, it could get at the nub of the issue, to some extent. And having an anti-trust exemption has worked out pretty well for the grand old game.