Re:What do you expect? (Score 1)

This is exactly the point of my post--the newspaper cannot print dozens of high resolution color photos of the game in the dead tree version of the paper, but for next-to-zero costs, they can post them all on the website and that's what's drawing reader attention.

Newspapers and tv stations who have websites must begin to think of their websites differetnly than they think of their other business. Newpapers must become more like tv stations, for one. They are going to have to have constantly updated news stories and richer content if they are going to compete online.

Thanks for continuing this. To take it a bit further, though, my intent in pointing out the popularity of the football gallery was to highlight the fact that scarce resources will follow the readership to a greater or lesser extent, and that migration of resources has consequences for what you're proposing.

You say "[Newspapers] are going to have to have constantly updated news stories and richer content if they are going to compete online." Fair enough, but the two points I was (poorly) attempting to illustrate are 1) if newsroom resources are going toward football photo galleries, they can't be used to post minute of city council meetings, reporters notes, full text of interviews, and other compelling content that can't fit in print; and 2) it's doubtful that a significant percentage of readers even want that level of complexity for most stories. Hence the popularity of easy-to-digest photo galleries: quick to consume, visually- stimulating, exclusive content that people can enjoy on their way to the football message boards.

I may be misunderstanding the thrust of your argument, though--if you're suggesting that it's photos that are going to draw attention, then you'll get no argument from me. Some of my colleagues in the newsroom often joke that we should simply abandon the whole "news" thing in favor of photo galleries and college sports. That's fine if all we wish to do is serve readers exactly what they want, but I think a lot of editors are of the opinion that a very real part of the newspaper's job is to provide news that, in the opinion of the editorial board, the audience needs to know.

One thing is for sure: newspapers, both individually and as an industry, feel the pressure, and are scrambling to come up with models that allow them to survive. Case in point, a colleague attended a conference last week where one of the panels was titled, "News 2010: Who will lead the way as newspapers die?"

This at a convention heavily attended by newspaper online editors.