The transformation to a digital culture is only part of the newspaper's challenge. The bigger transformation is to a digital revenue model that will yield a sustainable business.

Enders Analysis has examined some of the metrics of the transition and its conclusions are eye-opening:

1. A paywall subscriber is only worth one-quarter to one-third of a newspaper subscriber. Even if every subscriber converted to the paywall, there would be a problem of scale.

2. Paywalls will not be able to expand the revenue base by expanding the audience, due to the abundant source of free content online, in broadcasting and print.

3. Newspapers will have to re-examine their scale to retain their bearings. Rather than a 500-journalist operation, they will be looking at 200-journalist operations (the report is written in England --- thus the large newsroom numbers). 

Parenthetically, Canada's largest newspaper today hired one of its rival's former editors to be  its new vice president of business development. Ed Greenspon, former editor in chief of the Globe and Mail, has surfaced a year later at the Toronto Star, where he will work on development of new business models and write a weekly column.

At first, the notion of a paywall seemed silly. Better to take it down and get the traffic.
But when the traffic didn't turn into profit readily, the notion took on new seriousness. For some time now, publishers have been weighing the benefits of reconstructing a paywall to bring revenue.

In his latest post, veteran media and tech executive Alan Mutter notes the arrival of new, well-heeled local players in the game (Yahoo, AOL, Huffington Post), all willing to give away content others contemplate placing in behind the paywall. 

Mutter's conclusion: "For anyone other than publishers of mission-critical business or government news like the Wall Street Journal and possibly the New York Times, pay walls will not fly. It is time for everyone else to move on to more productive pursuits."

Those pursuits? Unique products for print, online and mobile, valued by customers and advertisers alike. Charging for day-to-day coverage is not likely "fruitful," he argues on his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog.

In the slow-news days of summer, even media transformation grinds to a near-halt. What is clear, though, is that major players and preparing for major plays in the months ahead, among them The New York Times as it (re)starts charging for content online.

It won't be a full paywall but a metered system and the Times is surveying its customers on an array of options.(survey below from Scribd). What it's looking for is the elasticity of demand and the price point when there is just the right mix of customers and revenue.

The Times is particularly examining whether existing print subscribers would pay additional fees for digital content, but it's also on record as saying its approach will be to permit a certain number of stories free each month to all before demanding fees. Some of the options include a day pass, an online subscription and an all-devices fee.

It'll be several months before the project is rolled out, but as might be expected, the industry is looking most keenly at its efforts.

Media writer and TV host Peter Funt argues in the Wall Street Journal (media with a paywall) that history has shown people will pay for their media, even when it seems the odds are stacked against the concept. Just as television and radio have proven the case, so can newspapers.

Sure, he says, there are obstacles: A raft of free content abounds online, for instance, and there are aggregators galore scraping the Internet to make it difficult to sell your style of curation. Funt says the industry has to end the debate and just get on with it.

"But the central question on which industry observers seem to dwell—will consumers pay?—has already been answered many times in media history. Yes," he writes.

The Oriella public relations network has released results (available by PDF here) of its annual international survey --- this year's is larger, of 770 journalists in 15 countries --- and found journalists' confidence is returning but uncertainty lingers about their work.

Year to year, fewer (44% vs. 60%) believe the print media sphere will shrink, 40% believe newer forms will furnish a good media landscape, and while more than 40% still believe online media could harm standards, the tone of the report is acceptance (nearly half believe their newspapers will eventually be digital only) and adaptation (9% expect advertising revenue will continue to decline).

Indeed, nearly half noted their roles are busier because of new media demands, 30% say they are working longer hours and 28% said they had less time to research stories. But only one-fifth believe standards have declined and only one-sixth liked their jobs less as a result.

Interestingly, as the effort to create mobile content has grown, the effort at such initiatives as blogs and videos has started to taper --- an indication of trade-offs in the growth of digital.

Nearly one-quarter of those surveyed had adopted or were considering paywalls or subscription models to strengthen revenue.

It is common practice for newsrooms to use search engines to circumvent porous online paywalls. It is also common to learn this in journalism and other schools as a research technique.

Mark Potts, in his Recovering Journalist blog, says he's dropped the online subscription to the Wall Street Journal, the financially successful WSJ.com. But he doesn't feel he's missing much of anything.

For one, the site itself continues to carry quite a lot of material, including many of the features Potts values. Then, there's the question of finding the rest, and while Potts doesn't divulge his technique, he leads you far enough to infer the rest of the journey.

What he's mainly saying is that technology isn't making the concealment of content anything but difficult. Access to much of it is relatively simple.

Media economist Robert Picard explains in his latest post the difficulty in setting new terms of access to news content. He outlines the challenge of operating as a multi-sided media --- that is, media with several relationships that help set value.

Newspapers used to be two-sided media: sold to readers and to advertisers. The more readers one had, the more it could reap in advertising revenue. The more advertising revenue, the more resources to attract readers.

Now newspapers have turned into multi-sided media: to readers and advertisers traditionally in print, to online readers free, to online advertisers and to advertisers using both.

"If one alters the free price online to create a paying audience, it not only affects the willingness of online advertisers to pay, but affects the willingness of joint audiences and advertisers to pay and thus effects performance of the print sales as well," Picard writes.

As a result, he says it's not easy to monetize newspapers. Those who choose to do so need to weigh carefully the effect on the other sides of the piece.

Gerry Storch, the editor of OurBlook and a former Gannett manager, posts a three-point argument  to Forbes.com why and how newspapers should charge online.

There aren't any particular surprises in what he proposes, but in the context of more news sites examining paywalls, it's an interesting reminder.

Storch's three-step program:

1. Go online entirely. Use the new devices like the Apple iPad to deliver the content. Get rid of the printing plant and the distribution process that goes with it.
2. Go local. There is no point in doing things outside your market. Take all the talent devoted to non-local and shift them back into the district.
3. Charge, charge and charge some more.

Too simple? What do people think?