This story from Tuesday's Globe and Mail has newspaper publishers singing the blues about making money off their online operations.

One of the first papers mentioned in the piece was the Wall Street Journal, which has a paid subscription model - $59 US per year for subscribers, $79 US for non-subscribers.

But it's for a business audience, as the article notes, and I suspect the cost of the subscription is treated as a business cost deduction at tax time.

And I've seen arguments that the WSJ's audience growth has been suspiciously flat, with the conclusion that the subscription barrier should be removed.

Some excerpts:

In Canada, The Globe and Mail (Disclosure: The Globe is owned by Bell Globemedia, which also owns CTV, my employer) has taken a similar approach to that of the Journal.

While The Globe offers far more free news content than the Journal does, readers must register and pay for premium material. That assures advertisers they are getting a “tight niche audience,” said Sandra Mason, vice-president of The Globe's on-line businesses.

Like the Journal, The Globe can then charge higher rates for its on-line ads than other sites, she said.

Ms. Mason said one reason the paper has opted for a hybrid model with lots of free material is to ensure potential future Globe readers — in a younger demographic than current readers — are exposed to the paper's content.

At the Winnipeg Free Press, most on-line content is available only to subscribers to the printed version of the newspaper. People who live outside the paper's delivery area can get access to the site for $5 (Canadian) a month. Some features, like classified ads and obituaries, are free.

“It didn't make sense to just give away our content,” Free Press publisher Murdoch Davis said. “There is lots of stuff for free on the Web, but that doesn't mean that an industry that has existed for well over 100 years on a paid model should simply abandon that model.”

Sorry, Mr. Davis, but my understanding was always that the subscription fee was to cover the cost of distributing the content, not producing it.

Think about it: Presses cost a fortune to buy. You need a crew to run them. Newspaper costs are very cyclical. You need a circulation and distribution department. Many of those costs are dodged with a website.

The web's problem has been revenue, but many newspapers run their websites not to be successful businesses, but to keep their newspapers from being failures. 

Davis has never been a big Internet fan. When I worked at the Edmonton Journal where Davis had been the editor-in-chief, the Philadelphia Inquirer had just put together a stunning online series called Blackhawk Down, which accompanied the series of articles by writer Mark Bowden (later turned into a fantastic book, then a mediocre movie).

While us online types were gaga over the series, Davis's response was essentially this: Why bother? Why not put the resources into the newspaper?

There was one story we heard where Davis was apparently appearing at a local journalism school. He was asked what would happen if his website got really successful. Davis reportedly said he'd shut it down, although he later denied that in the newsroom.

Davis's approach will work in a relatively one-horse town like Winnipeg, but walling off your website isn't a recipe for success in the wider world.