This one's just bizarre, but the story is making the rounds that Apple threatened to takedown Newsday's apps if Newsday didn't kill the following commercial that's been making the rounds: The commercial is marginally funny, but it makes no sense why Apple would get so upset about it. Apparently, the reason given so far is that the company doesn't like that the glass is shown shattering into large jagged pieces -- but it's not like that's going to cause people to go try to recreate the situation in the commercial. And, if the rumor is true, threatening to remove Newday's apps from the app store is just petty (which, it should be admitted, Apple seems to have no problem with). Of course, the end result of all this -- yet again -- is that more and more people are viewing the ad. And even I don't think Apple is so crafty as to issue the takedown just to get the ad more attention.

One of the claims we regularly hear from supporters of online newspaper paywalls is that even if it decreases page views, it can actually increase ad revenue, because the publisher has a lot more information about the audience and can sell that for more -- and, in theory, the audience is more loyal and engaged. We still haven't seen that in practice, of course. And it's worth pointing out that Cablevision, who put up a disastrously ill-conceived paywall for the newspaper Newsday, is now reporting that ad revenues continue to decline pretty substantially. To be fair, some will point out that Cablevision doesn't care that much, and is really just trying to use Newsday to stop people from dumping their cable TV/broadband offerings. That may be true -- and the same report does note that Cablevision added both TV and internet subscribers -- but it's worth pointing out for other news publications who make the claim about how paywalls can boost ad revenue.

With lots of people finding it rather amusing that a grand total of 35 people have subscribed to Newsday's paywall, a Newsday exec has responded by saying the purpose of the paywall was never about getting people to pay in the first place. It's all about reducing churn from cable subscribers. While the exec claims that those mocking the low number of subscribers ignored this, that's not at all true. In fact, at least in our case, the very title of our post about Newsday's paywall was all about how it was designed to reduce churn for Cablevision subscribers. The bigger point that people were making wasn't specifically about Newsday, but to alert all of those other folks who seem to think that people will jump up and pay for online access to their local newspaper. As Newsday is discovering, that's not the case.

Furthermore, if the goal was just to reduce churn, with no interest in getting outside subscribers, why offer a subscription plan at all? Why not just limit access to those who subscribe to Cablevision? Claiming no interest in signing up outside subscribers is shown to be a lie in the fact that they set up a system specifically to do just that.

Like many, we were amazed at the decision by Cablevision to try charging $5 per week (yes, per week) for its paywall to Newsday content online. The newspaper itself is not particularly good and doesn't really provide all that much in the way of excess value compared to what else is out there. And $5/week is extremely high. Yet, even so, we're a bit surprised that after three months, the paper has a grand total of 35 paying subscribers. Yes, 35. I'm sure that extra $175/week comes in quite handy. Oh right, they also saved on the salary of their popular columnist who quit, rather than have his work hidden behind a paywall.

To be fair, Cablevision never really seemed to view this much as a direct source of revenue, but rather as a churn reducer for its cable subscribers, who can get to the Newsday website for free. Still I doubt there are really that many people who decide not to drop their Optimum Cable service just because they get free access to Newsday online. I can't imagine that the $175, in any way, makes up for the drop in visitors and ad revenue. According to multiple online tools, the general estimate is that Newday has lost 50% of its web traffic since putting up the paywall. And in return, they get $175/week. Nice one, Cablevision.

One of the reasons why the NY Times eventually did away with its old "paywall" was that its big name columnists started complaining that fewer and fewer people were reading them. We've suggested in the past that newspapers who decide to put up a paywall may find that their best reporters decide to go elsewhere, knowing that locking up their own content isn't a good thing in terms of career advancement. So, with Cablevision deciding to put Newday behind a paywall, it didn't take long for some of its columnists to start to bailing. The NY Times is reporting that Newsday columnist Saul Friedman quit and did so while publishing an open letter on why paywalls are a bad idea, while also telling the NY Times that he knew his column was popular with people outside of Newsday's footprint, and he was upset that those people would not be able to read his column and that he wouldn't be able to send out links to his columns.

Oh, one other thing? Mr. Friedman is 80 years old and worked for newspapers for over 50 years. In other words, he's not just some "young kid who thinks everything online should be free" as we're so often told is the real problem. News organizations that lock up their content are increasingly going to discover that it's more and more difficult to attract top talent when compared to publications that actually help raise the journalists' profiles.

When Cablevision first bought Newsday, Charles Dolan admitted the company knew very little about the newspaper business, but promised to consult widely with newspaper experts in coming up with a plan. That seemed like a really really bad idea, since all the newspaper experts we've seen don't seem to even recognize what business they're really in. But, it looks like that's exactly what Dolan did. Back in February, the company announced that it was going to put up a paywall for its content. Since there had been no update or any action since then, I'd actually begun to wonder if the company was rethinking that idea. No such luck. Apparently it just took a bit of time to fully plan out Newsday's self-destruction.

The company has announced that it will start charging a whopping $5/week (not month, but week) to access the website unless you're an existing paper newspaper subscriber and/or a Cablevision subscriber.

Let's be absolutely clear what this is. It is not a plan to build a 21st century news organization. It's a plan to try to reduce churn elsewhere, by putting up a slight hurdle for Cablevision cable customers and Newsday newspaper customers to prevent them from leaving. Cablevision's customer base and Newsday's subscriber base overlaps quite a bit, so for plenty of those folks there will be no change at all. But this won't do anything to actually help the news organization grow. Those who don't subscribe to the paper edition or who use a competitor for broadband (like Verizon Fios which is pushing hard in Cablevision's market) will simply go elsewhere. While the NYC papers don't cover Long Island news quite as completely, they do a pretty good job with the basics, and other local news sources will fill in the rest. Cablevision is basically saying that it's giving up in the online news business. It's an admission that it doesn't know how to compete. This won't help it sign up new customers, and may only barely help it prevent old customers from leaving.

It's basically a suicide play for Newsday. This is really a disappointment, since Cablevision -- amazingly -- had actually been one of the most forward thinking cable companies out there in terms of offering real value on the broadband side of things. But apparently it bought Newsday as an asset to let it wither away.

Romenesko points us to the news that a judge is considering barring news organizations from showing photos of a handcuffed local legislator, Roger Corbin. Corbin was arrested on tax charges, and (not surprisingly), local news sources have shown photos of him in handcuffs. This seems both accurate and newsworthy. However, the judge seems to think that these photos could bias the jury, saying that it was "troubling" to him that the news organizations used the handcuffed photos rather than photos of Corbin back when he was an upstanding legislator. Of course, as the lawyer for the news organizations pointed out: "Courts do not get [into] telling the media what to publish." The judge then apparently compared the handcuff photos to child porn in explaining that the First Amendment wasn't absolute, and the gov't could restrain the use of certain photos (apparently skipping over the incredibly high barrier normally used to justify anything of that nature). The judge hasn't made a final decision yet, but even the fact that he's considering telling newspapers that they can't publish photos of a guy in handcuffs seems troubling.

I grew up reading Newsday, a newspaper covering some of New York City and its suburbs. In fact, when I was 11 years old, that was my first job: delivering Newsday to neighborhood homes. When various newspapers first started to go online, I tried to visit Newsday pretty often, but it put up an annoying registration wall early on, and I found plenty of other, better sources of news. The quality of reporting in Newsday already paled in comparison to many other newspapers, so it just wasn't worth the hassle -- even once it removed the registration wall. I almost never visit the website any more -- though, occasionally I check the sports pages there. Last year, Cablevision bought Newsday, and today, along with announcing it was writing down a huge chunk of that purchase, said that it's going to start charging for access to Newsday online, making it that much less likely that anyone will care enough to visit Newsday's website. The major area news is much better covered by the other newspapers, and various "hyperlocal" websites are popping up all over the place to cover the local specifics. Deciding to charge for Newsday online is basically a death sentence for the paper.

By the way, if you want more evidence of how badly Newsday is at handling the relevant news: at the time I'm writing this, you can't find news of this pretty big change on Newsday's site at all. Instead, I'm relying on a Reuters report. That tells you pretty much all you need to know about Newsday's ability to keep its website relevant. Why pay for worse news when others give you a better product for free?

Long Island-based cable company Cablevision is buying Long Island-based newspaper Newsday from the Tribune Company. While not all of Cablevision's shareholders are happy about this, it seems pretty likely the deal will go through. What's interesting, though is that Cablevision's Charles Dolan is admitting that the company knows very little about the newspaper business, but he's promising to "consult widely and seek advice from people who have backgrounds and are professionals in the field." To be honest, my first reaction on reading that is that doing so is the exact wrong thing the new owner of a newspaper should be doing. It seems like there are so many folks in the newspaper business these days who are still living in the past, trying to pretend they can bring back the glory days when there was no real competition. What newspapers need these days might be a completely different mindset, rather than one encumbered by the legacy thinking that has made it so difficult for many newspapers to adapt to the changing market.