The news is going online because of:

rapid updates
easy to template structure stories, pics and videos
and even more importantly: the comment section*

*comments are important because it gives online users a sense of "ownership" over the website. Look at the CBC and CNN or even Citynews: the comment section on some stories runs in the thousands, even tens of thousands (note Aljazeera has THE most comments I've ever seen and is so viciously racist, anti-everyone-and-thing and rarely do the editors take their thumbs outta their assholes that it remains the "viral" yet official news agency of the Middle East). People will become return customers and come back to see who has responded to their comment, how many likes they get and how many disagreements. Now you've got actively participating members who give you their real name, email and a portal to looking them up on Facebook and even (possibly) selling advertisements to them. With a database of millions of legitimate emails news agencies are very happy. With all the repeated clicks, banner ad companies are happy (and charging more to boot!), but so are advertisers who are getting a wider audience.

Lastly, you can't quite get a hold of whose looking at your newspaper. Sure you know the house, but who? Is the 15 year-old iPod chimping XBoxer (probably not)? The dad and/or mum (which is it)? Or maybe it's the grampa from "Up"? Online, you've at least got an identity, regardless of the public seeing a pseudonym. Aha!! So now you'll be able to tell that Master Bateman from Tallahassee is logged in comfortably in his basement at 42 years of age while his mum is warming up his cheese bread.

Ok, now onto Toronto..

We have all the big Dailies, The Star, The Sun, G&M, NP.

I like the Star mostly, I do on occiasion read G&M, but the Sun is just a ragsheet in my opinion, its pure crap, just total waste of paper, yes, I hate it, totally, for one thein, the portrayal of a scatily clad woman as a major colour feature, disgusts me, this is 2010, do we really need to still go as low as to try to sell sex, in a daily newspaper? its 80-90% ads everywhere else, its pure garbage...

I actually have been to Ottawa more than a few times and have been able to read the Gazette, I like it a lot, good stories, good long pieces (at least back about 3 years ago) and decent sized font..

There are a very few places here in Toronto where I can occiasionly get the Gazette, but its expensive and rare that I can find it.

Also just to let you know, I'm Legally Blind, I also use a white cane and screenreading software on the computer, when I read a newspaper, its about 1 to 1 1/2 inches from my right eyeball, so yes as my Mum used to tease me, I look like a raccoon after reading one, ( I get my nosetip blackened by the printing ink) I Love Reading, infact when I was a child, thats just one of the ways I learned to read, I'd get hold of a newspaper, (usually the Spectator) and try to read it, using a pen to find words I could read, then try to read and sound out new words, I have very fond memories of that.. I didnt like the comics section, except Family Circus and For Better or for Worse by Lynne Johnston, didnt like Snoopy much till later on in life...

Ok, sorry for the long comment, but I've been reading your blog most of the past evening and latenight, and this morning, and I like it a lot, your now in my Favorites.. I will certainly be back.

Really? I thought that key ingredient was freedom of speech and freedom of association. Or are you saying there is no way to have public discussion of issues without one specific kind of printed document?

I don't know if online advertising alone will provide sufficient revenue eventually to sustain a viable journalism operation locally. But I know it doesn't do that now. The NDG Monitor isn't prospering online, neither is the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. We don't have more examples of an online-only newspaper, but I expect they'll follow the same path.

I define a newspaper's online expenses as web staff, IT infrastructure, and the journalists who provide the content. Obviously they overlap with print. But suggesting that the cost of journalism shouldn't appear on a newspaper website's balance sheet kind of proves my point about how newspapers are subsidizing news online right now. That can't last forever as a business model, especially as print readers move online (or die off and are replaced by online-only readers).

First, there is the writing. While it may be gramattical, it is dull. Last summer on a 7-hour plane ride home from Britain, I kept my nose in one fascinating edition of the Saturday gaurdian and still didn't finish. Each article was well-researched and was a pleasure to read. When was the last time anyone said that about a Gazette article.

Yes. today's paper has a bunch of original stories. But a good number of the journalists you mentioned haven't had an original thought in years. And some of those that do tell me that the management won't let them cover the aspects that they would like.
In politics or business, the whole spectrum from A to B is covered. As if nothing was ever changing.

The Gazette's editorial policy is somewhere to the right of what it was when the Montreal Star was still alive. Of a million thoughtful pieces available for op-ed stories, the Gazette chooses the dullest. The choice of letters to the editor reeks, if only to show us how ignorant many Gazette readers are.

In the sector in which I work, La Presse has much more coverage, much better coverage and much better analysis (it would be an exaggeration to say the Gazette has any!) And this is an area of serious interest to the Gazette's "core" readership.

Sure some parts of the paper are nice and some of the features are useful, but those are mostly magazine-style features. No person who reads only the Gazette gets a working knowledge of whgat happens in most of Montreal, most of Quebec and most of the world. (Favorite recent anecdote: a headline writer says Zambia rather than Zimbabwe. All those African countries have confusing names....)

The management (if one takes ones clues from the surveys they send their on-line readers) seem to think that we want more fasion and travel supplements. And the most recent survey was trying to pry out of us how much more we would be willing to pay before crying uncle.

And now I hear that the publisher of The Suburban wants to buy the Gazette??

You're right - I forgot how clearly media people have been able to see into the future up to this point regarding their revenues, expenses and business models. I guess there's no reason not to think that they wouldn't be able to predict their future expenses accurately.

"Perhaps some print ads would move online, but many more would just find some other print medium, whether it's a competing daily or a community weekly or something."

I feel like you're repeating me. Perhaps I was unclear: that is precisely what I was getting at when I wrote the thing about a magical world where only the online product exists for the overwhelming majority of papers on the continent. If and when that world comes, no one knows how (un)profitable newspaper websites will be.

What are a newspaper's online expenses - how is that defined? Web design and content management staff, and computer servers for sure, but... beyond that, do you include the salaries of ad sales staff who also sell ads for print? Reporters who also file for print? Editors who also edit for print?

The two products are so tied together (and the online product is produced - largely - using content that would otherwise be produced for print) that it's possible to make a case that as long as you're covering the salaries of your web-specific employees with revenues generated from the website, anything else is really gravy. And you can also make the case that without a website today right now, the print edition of the Gazette would lose relevance and revenue, and wither and die. (Or if you're more of a cynic or cheap-shot artist, you might say that it would lose relevance and wither and die faster than it already is.) And if you're of that mind, then a website isn't a medium that's losing your business money, it's a medium that's helping sustain your business.

For all these reasons, it's really oversimplifying it to say that "the print product makes money while the online product bleeds it".

But the loss of revenue would be much higher from advertising. Perhaps some print ads would move online, but many more would just find some other print medium, whether it's a competing daily or a community weekly or something. Many print advertisers are just not yet interested in online, and shutting down the print product won't change that. At least not yet.

Really? By which measure? And at which papers?

This isn't a compelling point, because we live in a world where, right now for the overwhelming majority of newspapers in North America let's say, the print product exists alongside the online product, and it's impossible to separate the two in a dollars-and-cents sort of way. If only the online product existed (and again, I mean for the overwhelming majority of papers on the continent), some of the ad money that right now goes to the print product would presumably move to the online product. And operating expenses would significantly decrease because you wouldn't have to, you know, physically put out a newspaper everyday or every week or whatever.

How much would online revenues increase by in this mystical world? How much would expenses decrease? No one knows for sure because we just aren't there.

But the fact remains, newspapers are incredibly wasteful and provide a service that can be provided much more conveniently and economically by electronic devices.

And they would be more than happy to shut down their presses and home delivery systems if they could get the same advertising and subscription revenue. But even with all its waste, print advertising represents 90% of ad revenue, and the print product makes money while the online product bleeds it.

You spent much of your rebuttal defending individual journalists.

Individual journalists who work for newspapers. I'm not saying that the print medium is better than electronic. I'm saying that much of the original journalism still done today comes from print reporters who work at newspapers.

The good news is that internet news is begging for serious quality journalism (not that there isn't any, we just could use more), so there are lots of opportunities for up and coming journalists to make a name for themselves without selling their souls to a media giant.

And just as a personal aside, I'm all for anything that puts a dent in Quebecor. They're a bunch of supervillains.

In comparison, photography has historically been about the chemistry of silver halide only for technical reasons. The market for photographic paper is all but dead, but photography is still here.