Hal Varian, the chief economist for the world's largest search engine, doesn't believe Google has the answer to what ails newspapers. But he notes the decline began long before the Internet.
What he outlines in
his post to the Google Public Policy Blog is an even-handed overview of the debate over paywalls, of shifting to an exclusive online operation, and on the uncoupling of editorial and advertising and its consequences for the economics of news.
He notes that news hasn't made much money historically; rather, it's the access advertisers have to audiences.
"In my view, the best thing that newspapers can do now is experiment, experiment, experiment," he writes.
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