I’m not sure how I feel about paywalls on news sites, but I see some upsides. Thanks to the paywall, we don’t have to chase page views, so there’s no link bait or bikini-babe slideshows. There’s no extra cost for print subscribers, which rewards them for buying the newspaper. And the new site looks drop-dead gorgeous. It’s actually a pleasure to read without the distracting flash ads.

Related: How to contact John Tedesco

This is an interesting strategy. Mysanantonio.com will be free and post potentially viral content, while Expressnews.com will, hopefully, generate revenue from subscribers.

What do you think?

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Plans call for the Wednesday, Friday and Sunday editions of The Times-Picayune to be in many ways more robust than each of the daily newspapers is currently. They will contain a richer and deeper news, sports and entertainment report, as well as a full week’s worth of features such as society coverage, puzzles and comics.

One of the problems facing newspapers is that publishing every day is a blessing and a curse. If it’s a slow news day, you still have to go to press. The result: Some days, newspapers really shine. Other days, not so much. Readers have to decide whether that kind of inconsistency is worth the trouble — and money.

So in an ideal world, shedding the demands of the daily news beast could result in print editions that consistently offer substance and depth, while the website would handle breaking news, blogging and everything else a newspaper should be doing online.

Related: Express-News reader sees the future of news?

I hope that happens. Talented journalists work at the Times-Picayune — it won a Pulitzer Prize for its important coverage of Hurricane Katrina. But the odds don’t look good.

Micheline Maynard looked at what happened to the Ann Arbor, Mich paper that tried the same thing as the Times-Picayune and wasn’t impressed. John McQuaid examined the Times-Picayune’s suddenly very crucial website and found it wanting.

I hope the corporate spin coming out of New Orleans becomes a reality. That city deserve no less.

(Photo credit: CanadaGood on Flickr)

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This is pretty great.

First, a new, in-depth journalism project called Matter set a fundraising goal of $50,000 on Kickstarter.

They reached it in 38 hours.

They set a new goal of $75,000.

They reached it in four days.

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They kept going. This time, the goal was $100,000.

It took them nine days.

Can we stop talking about how people don’t want long stories online? Some people obviously do.

Let’s start talking about the best way to give them those stories.

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Time.

Or more precisely, getting paid to spend the time to find out what’s really going on in your community.

There are many talented bloggers out there. But the vast majority of them don’t get paid a steady paycheck to go down to City Hall, spend all day at council meetings, scrutinize campaign finance reports, and do all the things you need to do to hold officials accountable.

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Friedersdorf contrasted the work of a concerned citizen versus a newspaper reporter in California:

Let’s expound on the difference between Richard Marosi, Los Angeles Times reporter, acting as a government watchdog, and Miguel Figueroa, a lampshade maker, trying to do the same thing. Consider the task of getting the credit card bills that document graft in Lynwood. They are public records: state law mandates that the city turn them over to anyone who asks.

But a newspaper reporter has the time a lampshade maker doesn’t to go down to city hall during business hours; if the City Clerk wants to charge for photocopies, the reporter can expense it to the newspaper, whereas the lampshade maker pays out of pocket; should the City Clerk refuses to hand over the documents, the reporter can have an attorney at the newspaper draft a convincing letter, and write an article in the newspaper hammering the city for breaking the law; should the city clerk dally further, the reporter can have an LA Times attorney sue the city, and write another scathing story; and if the lawsuit drags on, he can stick it out, though that is seldom necessary, because when your legal adversary is correct on the merits, buys ink by the barrel, and cultivates a reputation for sticking things out, you rarely put them to the test.

Miguel Figueroa did far more than most Southern California residents ever would merely by pursuing the matter — it took him two years to get the credit card records. What did he do next? He called Richard Marosi, who launched an investigation, documenting enough abuses to sell his editors on a front page story, and creating enough of a public stir to take on the crooks in Lynwood. What would have happened if there weren’t any LA Times reporter assigned to that beat?

Probably nothing.

(Photo credit: Mike Licht on Flickr)

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But then the conversation veered in a direction unfamiliar to traditional newsrooms. Instead of planning how to get the story published before word of it leaked, the excited editors started throwing out ideas for how they could share Johnson’s reporting with a large array of competitive news outlets across the state and around the country. No one would get a scoop; rather, every outlet would run the story at around the same time, customized to resonate with its audience, be they newspaper subscribers, Web readers, television viewers, or radio listeners. California Watch’s donors—at this point, a handful of high-powered foundations—expect it to publish high-impact investigative journalism about California as widely as possible.

My favorite line: How journalists are a persistent bunch and continue to push for ways to do watchdog journalism. “I do have a need to investigate the bastards,” said Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity.

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My only quibble with this story is that it has a Texas-sized hole: There’s no mention of the Texas Tribune or Texas Watchdog. Wuh?

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