In pre-Internet days, people used to buy newspapers either as their principal source of information or to complement TV sources with analysis and some regional/local news. Given the choice, one would buy the newspaper that best matched one’s political and cultural sensibility. Life was simple!

With the Internet, news have become available for free to the reader. This was not really a new situation, as free newspapers in print – living off of advertisement revenues and classified ads- had existed for some time. This is the business model that the world of electronic media initially embraced. It worked for some time; then the classified ads became available for free. And now ad revenues are not enough any more to cover the costs. Why? Because of the economic crisis? It certainly accelerated the process, but it is unlikely to be the real cause for this reduction in advertisers’ interest.

Initially we – the readers – have replicated on the Internet what we were doing with newspapers: we were visiting our favorite newspaper’s web site and read it. And the internet grew bigger and bigger thanks to low-cost user-friendly technologies, making our choice of free sources wider and wider. Attracted by this diversity, we changed our way to look for news, analysis, opinions and content in general.

We changed our browsing habits and now, every day, we visit 2, 3, 5 or more web sites to get informed and form our own opinions on what is important to us. This is the real change that “news people” have to accept to guide them to reinvent the way to attract us and get our attention span, hopefully, a few seconds every day!