As traditional print newspaper readership is declining, online content is becoming more and more predominant. Just fewer than three-quarters of Internet users gather their news today online, according to the 2010 State of the Media Annual Report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. People are exploring various media outlets to get their news when they want it, especially as the amount of information continues to grow online.

But this transition presents itself with issues. Daily print newspaper circulation has dropped just over 25 percent since 2000, according to the State of the Media 2010 Report, and in September 2009, industry-wide circulation fell just under 11 percent from a year earlier. “Those declines, however, pale by comparison to the loss in revenues, which represent a more significant problem,” stated the report.

Both online and newspaper ad revenue has fallen over 40 percent over the last three years, concluded the report. According to a new survey on online economics, online users simply ignore online advertisements; “79 percent of online news consumers say they rarely, if ever, have clicked on an online ad.”

Newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal have tried a different approach to make money online by putting up a paywall. Beginning in January 2011, The New York Times is also implementing a type of a paywall. After users view and read a number of articles each month, the reader must pay a fee for unlimited access. Print subscribers will receive full access to the website, said an article in the New York Times. This paywall, the New York Times stated, should not have much of an effect on the occasional visitor but will target the devoted readers.

However, less than ten percent said to the State of the Media 2010 Annual Report that they would actually pay for online content. When polled if they had to pay for content, over half choose the subscription model – access to all the content on the site. Some readers do not feel this type of content is worth paying for.  Most audiences of a typical news organization are not willing to pay for online content, especially as many are beginning to gather their news elsewhere, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google.

Many readers feel online content is and should be different than what is found in the print product. Online content is something one should be able to transmit quickly, as well as provide the means for one to keep up-to-date on local, statewide, national, and international occurrences. The stories should be short or long, providing as much or as little information as needed to get the point across.

Newspapers will need to determine how to produce high-quality online content users are willing to pay for, or if readers are not willing to pay for the content, journalists will need to rethink their model for digital delivery. The industry must do more or the readers must adapt.

We at Media Genesis do not feel that regular news outlets should charge for online content, though. If news organizations want to maintain a readership, providing free online content is how they’re going to keep it.

But while online content should be free, this freedom comes at a cost: whether it is the newspaper cutting back on jobs, the advertisers generating new ideas to create revenue or the readers paying for content. Maybe the “payment” will appear in other means.

Whatever the cost, if traditional journalists and newspapers that have built up credibility after all these years are replaced by citizen journalists and bloggers, for instance, who will produce the news that gets fed to various search engines that people can trust? Will there be partnerships between old and new media outlets? Maybe collaboration between citizen and traditional journalists will be possible. Perhaps aggregators will find ways to integrate original content, becoming the “new” news provider.

While the future cannot be predicted, Journalism has continually evolved and must continue to evolve as the industry moves forward. Journalists will have to find innovative ways to adapt, yet it might just be a little different than to what most are accustomed.