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Sagt Chef Eric Scmidt im Interview mit der Financial Times. Ob es die New York Times sei? Kein Kommentar. Und wie sieht es überhaupt aus mit den Zeitungen? Schlecht, denn niemand hat eine Antwort darauf, wie in den „secondary markets“, außerhalb der Großstädte, Geld verdient werden kann. Und dann schaut niemand mehr dem Bürgermeister auf die Finger:

FT: What about charging for online content? There’s a bit of a vogue now for doing that? Is that going to work?

ES: I think it’s unlikely to work although people will certainly try it and they’re welcome to do so. And the reason is that for most content people are preferring an advertising model. There will be some very specialised content, you know, high-quality newspaper articles, magazines, that sort of thing, which I suspect subscriptions will work for. But for the average news that everybody gets today they would prefer an advertising-supportive model.

FT: And when you say, high quality, would something like The New York Times fit into that area? Or are you talking about more specialised content?

ES: Without commenting about a specific paper, the specialised reader is going to pay, and they’re willing to do it with subscriptions or micro payments. For average news even the best quality, but common news – what is the President doing, what happened in the Senate – it’s highly unlikely, I think, that the people will pay extra for that because there will be so many free versions.

FT: Even as all the metro dailies go broke? Isn’t there a possibility that high-quality, general news becomes sufficiently scarce that people can charge for it online?

ES: Most people think that there will always be enough competition at the centre of our government, at the most important cities and so forth. The real loss that we’re having right now is the loss in the secondary markets, where there was not that much money to begin with, there were not that many newspapers to begin with and reporters. And I’m concerned that the reporting that keeps the Mayor honest, that kind of local is largely going to be gone. They don’t know how to fix that.