But I wonder whether you can show that ANYTHING like this model has worked in other media fields. American TV, for instance, seems near the high point of bundled pricing that treats the Home and Garden Channel with the same value as the History Channel; only a few high-value channels such as ESPN and HBO warrant their own pricing.

General-purpose print “news” media such as the NYT is more comparable to a TV service bundle: you get Arts/Entertainment, Human Interest, Business, the crossword, Bloviation, weather… a bunch of topics that you probably wouldn’t buy on their own but that you like to have. But unlike print media, the internet makes it easy to find substitutes on a topic-by-topic basis — I’d be OK without Krugman as long as I could keep seeing DeLong, Münchau, Thoma and a few others— and this suggests that the existing concept of a “newsroom” is an inappropriate model for our Brave New World.

In music, the effect of the internet seems to be to disintermediate the labels’ role of identifying, promoting and controlling access to musicians. Across the spectrum— the SF Symphony, a friend who’s a classical pianist, some of my favorite jazz artists— all have deals with labels but self-produce and distribute their own material.

News doesn’t have as many headline acts, hence the value of the brand. But as my economics tastes indicate, that, too is up for grabs. News organizations will have to think long and hard about where they add value that creates customers.

I would add these success criterias to your model:
1. Strong owners ready to take some years of serious financial loss (persistence, as you put it)
2. Differentiate content/products for different reader groups, to seek different willingness to pay
3. A strong CRM-strategy to keep readers lojal and create new business opportunities/revenue streams
4. The battle cannot be won alone – to radically change consumer behaviour and willingness to pay for news, a majority of the newspapers on each market must charge for their digital content

What do you mean by “page views”? For digital, there’s no page. The only thing that matters is article views. I look at a lot more than 20 per month. Maybe 10 to 20 articles per day. (The bad news: I’ve trained myself to ignore ads.)

I pay more than $120/year for wsj.com, but it’s worth more to me. The wsj forums are so much superior to nyt, and this matters a lot to me. I want to engage and respond and argue. But nyt still thinks the experience is about skilled reporters communicating one-way with eager readers, who need no interaction with each other. Wrong!

When I open my Firefox browser, first thing I see is iGoogle with news headlines from my leading media: wsj, nyt, al jazeera, bbc, and cnn. Then LinkedIn questions. In that order.

Frederick, you have not discussed in your posts the importance of online interaction with media stories. Every day, I spend time doing what I’m doing right now: responding to articles, posts, essays, and other responders. Media that make this easy, and that host interesting forums that attract intelligent responders (or at least not illiterate flamers!) I value more, and I would be more willing to pay for.

How could you work this into your equation? So far, you’re just translating newsprint to digital, without considering the potential added values of the digital forum.