I hooked up a pre-filled google reader for our web editors to use about 3 weeks ago, it hasn’t been touched. Now we’re chasing down JS generated pageviews from photo galleries, trying to catch up to other market’s numbers. For what? Thump the chest? Print out the number real big like and snail mail it to advertisers?

In a perfect world all of the advice in this article is sound, but newspapers (online and off) bow to the will and want of the advertiser. Advertisers like big numbers, so we focus on what gives us big numbers. In most cases we leave the news behind chasing pageviews. Someday that will bring about the downfall of not only the newspaper, but the advertiser as well.

Yes, newspapers have invested in websites. But they’ve frequently spent that money in the wrong place. It’s not merely how much money you spend. In fact, spending millions upon millions is reckless in a medium that does not have the capital costs that print does. Craig Newmark certainly hasn’t outspent newspapers in online investment.

Secondly, being popular doesn’t necessarily translate to being good. It might be that you’re the only one with that information. If there’s only one grocery store around, but they require me to stand in three lines to buy anything, yeah, I’ll go so I can eat, but as soon as there’s a new convenience store, I’m there for as much as I can get. My concern is, as the barriers for entry fall (and for putting up a website with an open source CMS, they are laughably low) it is far easier to compete with a newspaper.

Newspapers make a mistake in assuming that no one can compete with a 200 person newsroom. Except, no one is trying to compete there. A site only needs as many reporters as they want to have relative to what they are trying to cover. The really big problem is assuming your enemy’s army is going to fight according to the rules you need to be successful. They won’t. Ever.

They didn’t lose gobs online, in fact most papers have been at or close to paying for their web forays for quite some time. That’s just it, timid forays are not a commitment.

If only the industry could move past the obsession with “making readers pay for content” and actually get down to doing just half of what you’ve suggested.

Here’s a news flash: Readers have never paid for content. They’ve paid for delivery. Newspapers make a scant percentage of revenue through circulation, yet making up that revenue on the Web – where delivery costs are miniscule compared to the costs of printing a paper and distributing it – seems to be the main focus of late among industry experts.

The issue is, or should be, a non-starter. Move on and focus on real improvements – like the ones you recommend here.