It seems clear: The future of news is online, and printed newspapers appear headed for extinction.

But the picture isn't that simple. Printed newspapers make less money than they used to, but they're still far more profitable than news websites, and until that changes, papers will be around.

Meanwhile, news organizations, hit hard by the recession, are considering whether to start charging for their online content. And a battle is brewing between publishers that produce news stories and the aggregators who make money by linking to them.

Here you'll find the latest developments on all of this.

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You're probably familiar with the legal battle between the music industry and websites that allow surfers to download music. The music industry charges that some sites allow users to download music without paying for it, thus depriving musicians and record companies of royalties.

There's a somewhat similar fight going on between news websites and the so-called aggregators. Aggregators gather headlines and snippets of news stories from news websites, then put links to those stories on their own sites. Aggregators can be search engines, like Google News, or websites such as The Huffington Post.

But news websites increasingly complain that the aggregators make lots of money, in the form of ad revenue, off of the news stories they link to, but don't share those revenues with the news sites that actually produce those stories.

That's a form of theft, say many in the news business.

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Newspaper publishers have long complained that Google rakes in mountains of cash by indexing news stories. Now, in a conciliatory gesture, Google is allowing publishers to set a daily cap on how many articles readers can access for free through the search engine.

In a post on Google's official blog, the company said it will let publishers limit readers to five free articles per day while still allowing news stories to appear in search results.

The move came the same day that News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, speaking at a government seminar on the future of journalism, blasted aggregators for "feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others."

Murdoch and other media execs say aggregators like Google make money, in the form of ad revenue, by posting snippets and links to news stories, while the news outlets that actually produce those stories get nothing.

Murdoch has threatened to block Google from displaying his company's articles and is mulling the idea of giving Bing, a Google competitor, exclusive access to News Corp. news content. Many other news sites are considering charging subscription fees for their web content.

Google claims it helps news outlets by sending web surfers to their sites. But Tuesday's announcement is clearly meant to show that the world's most popular search engine wants to be friend, not foe, to newspapers and online news sites.

The move represents a change to Google's "first click free" system, which lets web surfers users find and read articles blocked by subscription paywalls. Under the change, news sites will be able to limit Google users to a maximum of five pages of free content per day unless they subscribe or register.

Anyone concerned about the survival of newspapers should read Rick Edmonds' testimony to the Federal Trade Commission.

Edmonds, the Poynter Institute's business analyst, spoke Tuesday as part of the FTC's workshop on the future of journalism. And while speeches from Rupert Murdoch and Arianna Huffington may have gotten more media attention, no one summarized the challenges facing print journalism as succinctly.

Here are some of Edmonds' main points:

• Widespread newsroom layoffs have already diminished coverage, particularly in areas such as science, arts and suburban news. Websites meant to pick up the slack have filled only part of the void.
• More layoffs are coming, but the more papers cut staff, the less content they have to offer their readers, who can go elsewhere for news.
• Many newspaper companies, particularly those that own large metro papers, are burdened by debt and being bought out by private equity firms with zero news experience. Whether such firms will be good stewards of the papers they purchase is anybody's guess.

But the news isn't all bad. Edmonds outlines some positive developments:

• Newspapers are successfully raising their newsstand prices, making them less reliant on advertising revenue, which plunged during the recession.
• Ad revenue should rise as the economy gains strength. How much is unclear.
• Charging for online content may provide a new source of revenue.

Edmonds paints a gloomy but not despairing picture of the print journalism landscape. Newspapers will probably never regain the dominance they once enjoyed, but going forward he says they should retain a critical role in an ever-more diverse media environment.

Let's hope he's right.

Photo by Tony Rogers

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