If at first you don't suceed...

...then fail and fail again. This seems to be the mantra of the Schenectady Daily Gazette’s business model, which is sort of like watching a 12-beer drunk stagger home after a long night of imbibing. The drunk has enough primal cognition to realize they must affect a change in their surroundings immediately before happening upon an inhospitable circumstance; but they lack the coordination to navigate and therefore make the same flawed decisions with almost comical repetition. Take two steps, fall down. Take two more steps, fall down again. Fiddle with the keys. Drop the keys. Take another two steps, fall down; repeat.

The whole scene isn’t one that anyone can correct. From afar, an observer can chuckle, maybe even chortle at the bloke. But anyone with a conscience will feel a twinge of remorse for this schadenfreude; a sense that this somewhat humorous spectacle is indicative of a greater looming problem that will foment tragic circumstance as the failed attempts at navigation mount.

This week, the Gazette’s leadership took a bold step into a dark and perilous forest by abruptly clipping off their freely published Web content. The paper’s leadership claims the sudden shift in was necessary to remain viable in an otherwise hostile market, which has hemorrhaged profits at an unsustainable rate. Without ad revenue coming in from its free content and with circulation dwindling, the paper needed to do something to move toward sustainability, Editor Judy Patrick claimed in a column published shortly before the switch Monday.

To date, the paper has clipped off free-access to everything except its small collection of blogs and a generic classifieds search engine. Articles posted online contain about 20 words of the lead, which the papers’ brass dangles like a carrot in an attempt to lure online subscribers. The bold move came shortly less than two years after the Gazette first stepped into the light of online publication and at a time when its Web presence had fallen to a very distant second to the Albany Times Union, which virtually presides over the Capital Region’s slice of cyberspace.

The Gazette’s new format charges $4 per week for a print and online subscription, which is a penny less than it costs to receive the paper delivered to your doorstep. Online only subscribers can expect to pay $2.95 per week for full access to the Gazette’s content. Print-only subscribers pay $3.99, thereby reducing the monthly cost by a whopping nickel.

Needless to say, the Gazette’s online readership was not pleased. The general feeling among these readers was that they’d gladly take up reading the TU online for free and gleefully watch the Gazette spiral into insignificance and anonymity. And an informal survey conducted by the paper affirmed these attitudes. Of the 928 readers that cast a vote, only 127 said that papers should charge for online content.

“I think this signals the [Daily Gazette] going back into the ‘dark ages’ and will not help the long term outlook of the Daily Gazette and the potential it had in its hands that the stuffed suits let go,” wrote one online reader. “Are you telling me that the 1,200 paid online subscribers you might get back at $4 each are really worth it?”

Others noted that the paper chose one of the worst times in the industry to shift to online readership and an even worse economic time to be demanding cash from the readers now accustomed to getting the paper for free. Some offered the Gazette’s decision as further indication of its inability to change with the times; something that has been a hallmark for just about everything that is associated with Schenectady.

“I can imagine the management team of the Gazette in the 1870s telling [its] customers and employees that there's no need to cater to these newfound railroads, or a few years later explaining to their board that telephones will never be necessary for businesses,” wrote another poster.

Not surprisingly, the Gazette’s move sent ripples throughout the publishing industry. Most notably, the change prompted a response from the all-free-content New York Times, which is struggling with its own financial issues. David Carr, the writer who pens the Times’ Media Decoder column, tried to log onto the Gazette’s Web site to read about the switch, but was asked to subscribe to receive the full content of the editor’s letter to readers. Not being that interested in Schenectady, Carr attempted to gain access to just Patrick’s column and was asked to pay $2 –half the amount for receiving a full week of coverage.

“Here at Decoder, we’re still deciding whether to pony up the two bucks to find out the rest of the story,” he wrote. “Sure, we could pick up the phone, but that is so old media.”

Carr brings up a remarkably interesting point, even if it’s at the expense of poking fun at one of the many loopholes in the Gazette’s logic. There is always a way to package and market online content, but it’s not in the same manner that one markets something tangible. Just ask the recording industry about that.

Less than a decade ago, the free proliferation of music via Napster and other peer-to-peer sites threatened to decimate the recording industry. In response, a select group of money-grubbing musicians decided to hire a team the most expensive lawyers the world had to offer and go after Napster’s jugular. And when they dispensed of Napster, they went after the scores of college students and housewives download the free content.

The whole affair drew the musicians, the recording industry and the lawyers more bad press than any of them ever imagined. The legal battle fanned the flames of the fire Napster lit, prompting a veritable revolution of open source software aimed at subverting the wrath of those who demanded penance for their creative property. So whenever the lawyers nailed one site, another four would pop up.

Reason finally reached the industry with the rise of Apple’s iPod. The creation somehow convinced producers to see beyond the money they were making with tangible compact discs and understand that the online format wasn’t nearly as valuable as they had originally figured. Suddenly, songs were being sold by iTunes for less than a dollar. And suddenly, paying for a song didn’t seem that far out. The American consumer rationalized that paying what amounted to a third less than a Double Mochachino at Starbucks was worth it to know the product they were getting was genuine and received through legal channels.

Now imagine if the news industry adopted a similar model. Imagine if the news industry understood that not all readers want to read every last detail about Schenectady or even the Capital Region. Would readers pay a nickel to read the text below a salacious headline? How about buy five for a quarter and get the sixth free? Reader accounts could be billed monthly via credit card, which would allow them to click away feverishly if they wanted. At the end of the month, settle up.

Still, the whole approach to balancing the waning ability of ad departments on the backs of readers is ill thought out to say the very least. Entire papers once sold for an infinitesimal fraction of the cost to produce them. Oddly enough, people stopped buying them around the same time the industry started raising the newsstand price. First, prices were raised from a nickel to a quarter, then from a quarter to 50 cents, and to nearly a dollar now. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that people aren’t reading them anymore.

Yet the industry as a whole refuses to address these issues. And pretty soon, the only alternative will be wholesale changes in the product itself. Take for instance a recent move by the Times Union to seed community-based blogs throughout its coverage area. They started with Bethlehem, a large suburb that the paper has seemed wholly unwilling to devote its coverage. The experiment was wildly successful and now the effort has spun blogs to East Greenbush, Albany, Scotia-Glenville and yes, Saratoga Springs; all with limited success. Given the recent layoffs at the TU, this could very well end up becoming the future of their local coverage.

The bottom line is there are no easy fixes to the ailing media. To credit of both the TU, they’re trying something new, even if that something seems like a poor substitute to the professionalism of modern journalism. The Gazette, on the other hand, is showing exactly how long in the tooth its thinkers truly are. And they’re bringing new life to the axiom, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.