Former Denver publisher weighs in on Plain Dealer proposal

John Temple was editor and then publisher of the Rocky Mountain News, one of two Denver dailies. It shut down in February after publishing for 150 years. It was the paper from which I learned of Marilyn Monroe's death (my family spent every August in Colorado).

Clearly, he has personal reasons to be deeply concerned and alarmed about the fate of daily newspapers. But in his blog, he makes it clear he too finds Plain Dealer lawyer David Marburger's how-to-save-our-business proposal unworkable and ineffective. (The proposal suggests an "embargo" of information in newspaper stories for 24 hours unless the user signs a "contract' to pay for it, and aggregators sites sharing their ad revenue with sources they link — e.g. provide free promotion — to).

http://www.johntemple.net/2009/06/before-journalists-go-too-far-in.html

Working from the description of the proposal in Connie Schultz's column in the PD Sunday, Temple says,

"I think they'd find that even if they could recapture every penny others are making by siphoning their resources, it would do little to alter newspapers' financial straits but it would do a lot to reinforce their negative image."

Despite having been a victim of the change geography of the news world, Temple has a clear-eyed take worth reading. And he isn't proposing ODB pay for driving traffic to his site.