Also on deck are a discussion of whether newspapers should begin charging online aggregators which currently link to their content for free, and how newspapers might get in on the lucrative the online search business.
As someone who works in the print industry, there are a couple of things that strike me about this story. First is that the print industry is so obviously run by very old men, who may use email and the web but who have almost no understanding of the internet's impact on society or the ever-increasing expectations people have about how they should be able to access information. This is evidenced by the fact that newspaper execs are still trying to figure out how to win back the classified ad business from sites like craigslist. They need to make peace with the fact that that business is gone for good, so that they can start focussing on new ways to deliver their content.
The second thing that I noticed was the tone of entitlement: they're hoping to regain ad business that has been "usurped" by the web. It sounds like they think of it as something that was stolen from them. This attitude is really hurting them, because it's much more about the past than the future. Instead of trying to get back something that's 'owed' to them, they should be looking ahead to something new. They should be thinking about what they do well, and how they can use technology to deliver it in a way that's faster, cheaper and/or more convenient, because the only way they're going to stop losing money is by producing something that people feel is worth more.
Update: According to the New York Times, the Associated Press announced today that they will take legal action against "web sites that use newspaper articles without... permission."
Update: The AP is now saying they're just trying to fight "web news piracy."
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