If you mouseover the “PayCheckr” widget above, you’ll see an early version of a donation and payment model for digital content that I find intriguing. You can create your own beta PayCheckr widget and play around with it now, as I did with the widget above, though this is a “lite” version and the customization is limited.

The concept is simple enough to understand. I think of it as a payment and/or donation widget that is very much like the ShareThis widgets that you see on many websites and blogs; at the beginning or end of an article you mouseover a ShareThis icon which expands to offer multiple options for you to share a link to it with others via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, e-mail it to a friend, etc.

PayCheckr likewise expands to offer the web user multiple options — as chosen by the site or blog owner — for paying for or supporting a website or blog, or specific content (article, video, service, etc.). The site or content owner can configure the widget to contain multiple options:

• Collect money…
• for a subscription
• for a one-time purchase (say, to trigger a PDF or software download, or access premium content)
• as a donation from the user
• Ask for non-monetary support by…
• viewing a sponsor’s message
• viewing an advertisement
• taking a survey
• Point users to other sites that earn you money, such as…
• affiliate e-commerce pages (e.g., Amazon.com or an online store) where purchases by your users earn your site a commission
• a marketing-firm survey that you receive commissions for participant referrals
• a barter-exchange program

For now, PayCheckr “Lite” offers limited functionality. I can’t yet put my own logo or otherwise customize how the widget looks in its closed state, or change the default language of “Many ways to pay.” The fields to enter my options limit the number of characters too much, so that when I tried to put in the names of my “sponsor” sites, they wouldn’t fit and had to be shortened. But it’s enough to envision how it might be used once the PayCheckr service is fully featured:

1. Access to full article after user action – Let’s say a news website wants to encourage some form of “payment” before showing the user more than the first couple paragraphs of a story. Rather than a typical paywall (i.e., pay now to view more or go away), a PayCheckr widget (properly designed to explain its purpose) could permit access to the content when the user selected any of the options set up by the site owner. Let’s say, either (1) make a donation, (2) pay for a subscription for future premium-content access, (3) watch a 30-second video ad and then get access to the rest of the article, or (4) visit a sponsor’s page that shows as a pop-up while the rest of the article appears on the screen below.
2. Give payment options up front for a purchase – Let’s say that you’ve got an e-book that you want users to pay for, but you want to give them multiple options. Rather than require the buyer to fill out a credit-card order form as the only option, your PayCheckr widget could offer multiple payment options: PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon or iTunes account payment, direct payment from bank account, standard credit card form, payment with frequent-flyer miles, charge to mobile-phone account, etc. The benefit would be that if one of the choices is quick and convenient for the individual buyer, he or she is less likely to bail out of the purchase than if the only option is to fill out a long credit-card form.

Since PayCheckr is in early beta state without some of its planned features implemented, I can’t give it a good trial run yet. But it represents, to me at least, a softer approach to getting users to “pay” for digital content (especially news). If I as a web user I run across, say, an interesting research report that the publisher wants me to pay for, I might click on by if the only option is paying actual money. But if that valuable report can be viewed by non-monetary means — taking a marketing survey, or watching a 30-second sponsor video — then the report’s publisher is earning some money from me when with the money-only option I’d mean zero revenue.

PayCheckr also offers yet another model for soliciting donations. If I’ve got a special report online that I want everyone to see, but I’d still like to get some willing people to donate in thanks for the work I’ve done, perhaps a PayCheckr widget could offer multiple donation options — again, to make it easy for the potential donor to toss some money my way by selecting a donation option that’s simplest for him or her.

I also might want to put a PayCheckr widget in a permanent position on my blog, such as I’ve done with my Kachingle donation-network medallion in the left column of this site. (I’ll likely do that once PayCheckr offers more customization of the widget’s look and wording.)

Finally, since I work in an academic environment (University of Colorado at Boulder School of Journalism & Mass Communication, running the Digital Media Test Kitchen), I’m interested in PayCheckr from a research angle. I’m reminded of the Miami Herald’s website experiment late last year when it put a “donate” button at the bottom of all stories, but the only option for those wishing to donate money to support the Herald’s journalism was to fill out a long credit-card payment form. I’d love to know if a similar experiment would work better (the Herald killed its donation experiment quickly) if potential donors had multiple options for supporting the Herald, a la the PayCheckr approach.

(Disclaimer: I’ve been following the development of PayCheckr for some time, and have volunteered for solo focus-group sessions to aid the development team, led by PayCheckr founder Allan Hoving.)

I’ve been in touch with Twixa.com and its CEO, Kurt Huang, for some time while he and his team have been developing a new revenue widget for online publishers. You can see it on this post, next to the Tweetmeme (“Retweet”) button at right: ThankThis.

Click on the button and you can financially support this site AND support a charity that you choose. But don’t worry: You will not spend a dime (or a cent) by clicking.

The money comes from sponsors, whose messages show up in a pop-up box after you click “ThankThis.” Money earned when a visitor to this blog clicks on an ad in one of these pop-ups goes into the system, and is later distributed among:

• The site publisher (in this case, me)
• The charity that the visitor selects when he or she has accumulated enough points
• Twixa.com (which collects a small portion to run the service)

ThankThis is in private beta currently, and the ads you’ll see are from Google, so for now we’re not talking about much money changing hands. But if the service takes off and is able to sell enough sponsorships (or better, targeted advertising), I think this could turn into a nice extra revenue stream for online publishers.

ThankThis charity donation choices

When you get enough points to be ready to donate them, you click the “Donate Points” link and are presented with several options for spending them on a charity listed. (See the image accompanying this post.)

I like this idea, because … well, most people are cheap. They don’t want to donate money to a website that asks for a donation, and they most often ignore calls online to donate to charities. But with ThankThis, of course, donating money — yes, money — to a charity costs nothing.

Charity giving for cheapskates … what could be better?! (Count me among those online cheapskates, for the most part; but I do pay $5 a month for a Kachingle account and €2 a month for a Flattr account. Those services similarly aim to support multiple online publishers with user donations, but they distribute website users’ money while ThankThis distributes money from sponsors and advertisers.)

Will this work? I don’t know, but I like the concept and think that it has a chance of working. It’s not likely to support large newsrooms or anything like that, but, again, it might provide some extra money for the budget.

I’m disappointed that Kachingle and Flattr haven’t taken off in a big way yet, and I fear that ThankThis may suffer the same fate. If some BIG web publishers implemented any or all of these systems for networked user donations and put some marketing smarts into them, I suspect we’d see more money flowing. (I mean the likes of you, HuffingtonPost.com, About.com, et al.)

The other day I received two envelopes of coupons in my (snail-)mail box.

The first included the same kind of untargeted assortment of color-printed discount coupons from local businesses that I’ve received for decades. OK, not entirely untargeted; after all, they were for businesses in my area. But the sender knew nothing about me other than where I live, apparently, so flipping through the 1/4-inch-thick stack of coupons, all but one went immediately to the recycling basket.

The other, smaller package of (single-color) coupons was from one of the grocery stores I shop at: King Soopers. Because the King Soopers chain offers member discount cards, the company’s databases have lots of data on what I’ve bought from its stores; you pretty much have to use the cards (or enter your phone number as an alternate ID at the check-out), or else you pay significantly more by missing all the in-store sale prices.

While King Soopers has been sending my household product-discount coupons (which go beyond the member-card sale prices) for many years, this latest envelope got my attention. Of the dozen coupons in my envelope, every single one was for a grocery item and brand that I routinely buy. The company at last seems to have evolved its system to the point where I could use all those coupons.

If I was of mind to get upset about digital privacy, I might have been freaked out that one of the coupons was for a free pint of Haagen-Daz ice cream. You see, one of my daughters and I are both fond of that company’s Java Chip variety, and I must confess to having purchased quite a few packages. My guess is that the system tracking my purchases noticed that I’d bought a bunch of Haagen-Daz, and rewarded me not just with a discount, but with a coupon for a free pint.

You may feel differently, but I’m not one to freak out about this on privacy grounds. I’ll trade the occasional free item and ongoing discounts for a computer tracking my grocery purchases. In fact, I thought it was pretty darn cool that King Soopers has advanced the technology it uses enough so that I can get, in effect, personalized discount coupons.

Returning to the usual topic of this blog, none of the news brands that I use regularly know me anywhere near as well. Count me as one of those news website readers commonly afflicted with banner-ad blindness. I’m looking for news, so I seldom notice the ads, unless there’s something about them that hits my interest areas.

Google, on the other hand, knows me well, because it reads all my e-mail, as a regular user of its Gmail service. On Gmail, there’s a thin strip of text ads that run on top of the list of messages and above opened e-mails. I notice those ads frequently, because they are placed contextually based on the content of the e-mails in my Gmail inbox. I don’t try to look at them; they just catch my eye when they’re relevant to me. I’m surprised at the number of those Gmail text ads that I’ve clicked on through the years.

Back to news once more, there’s a similarity between when I visit a news website and when I’m using Gmail. In both cases, I’m task oriented: reading news, and reading and responding to e-mail. Yet with Gmail I notice more of the ads because many of them end up targeting me because they’re based on the content of the e-mail I’m reading. With most news sites, the ad targeting is weaker, and the advertising thus less effective in catching my eye.

That King Soopers and Gmail know me better as an individual than do the news providers that I frequent online is a problem for the latter. Sure, some newspaper companies have used targeting technology to track what a website user is reading, and perhaps if they have the data through required online registration, their systems can match that information with my age and location to deliver personally relevant ads on their websites and/or via e-mail or other subscribed services.

But I believe news providers online need to do a much better job or personalization and targeting of advertising. Local newspapers, indeed, might want to look at the grocery industry to pick up some tips. I find it intriguing that the most effective, personalized advertising that I’ve received lately came from a grocer.

Perhaps those member cards are something that news brands should consider more seriously.

Today I received an e-mail promotion from an electronics e-retailer that I’d purchased from before. The after-holidays sales promotion looked interesting, so I clicked the ad to go to the site. I spent very little time there, didn’t see any deals I couldn’t live without, and clicked away.

About an hour later, in comes another e-mail from this company, this one with a note, “Thanks for visiting our site!”, and an e-mail coupon for a free $100 dining-out card if I make a purchase of at least $200.

This isn’t a new technique among digital-savvy retailers, but it’s the first one like this that I recall receiving.

Have any news websites tried this approach? (I’ve yet to see it.) It’s a great idea.

For example, tie automated e-mail promotions to when a (known) visitor views a car-review page. Build in some intelligence: If the site visitor reads a review about pick-up trucks or high-mileage hybrids, send a discount offer from a (client) local dealer, or maybe eBay Motors, specific to trucks or hybrids, respectively. Did the user visit the sports section and read three or more articles? E-mail him a discount coupon from a client sporting goods store.

This is a simple, potentially effective technique. But of course you need to know who your visitor is. That’s simple enough if you require your users to register on your site, or you know who they are because they log into your site via Facebook Connect or some other third-party connection.

And you need their permission, which you can get during the registration process (if your site has one), or by asking for permission to send them discounts in the future if they click their assent in a pop-up box.

Yet another possibility is if your news site has a premium membership program (a la Times+). Make receiving these targeted, contextual discount offers a benefit for being a paying news-website member. Of course, members don’t have to receive them and can decide for themselves whether it’s a useful benefit or feels more like annoying spam.

Finally, think beyond e-mail, of course. At sign-up for this service, offer options: Receive the discount offers via mobile phone, Facebook mail, Twitter DM (direct message), e-mail, etc.

If any news organizations have tried this, and I’m just not aware of it, please let me know in the comments area below — and tell us how it’s worked out.

I spent Monday and Tuesday this week participating in the “Upgrade to Digital” workshop at the brand spanking new Boulder Digital Works at CU facility in downtown Boulder, a bleeding-edge training program to teach advanced creative, tech, and business digital-media skills. (Disclaimer: I attended on a free pass since I’m working on building a digital-media initiative for CU’s Journalism & Mass Communication School.)

What was especially great about the experience was that the workshop was run by Scott Prindle and Joe Corr, VP/director of technology and senior technical lead, respectively, of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, the white-hot ad agency with offices here in Boulder and in Miami. Other CPB personnel also floated in and out (plus other special guest presenters), so attendees were treated to being taught, and critiqued, by ad agency rock stars.

Since I’m focused on the news industry and its transformation, I had a different perspective than most of the other workshop participants; I was thinking of how what we were seeing and learning could be adapted and/or applied to news (from digital techniques, to business models, to technology). In this and perhaps more blog entries, I’ll share a few take-aways from the last two days, as viewed through my news-colored glasses.

1. It’s the utility, stupid! Those companies savvy enough to be on the digital forefront (enough so that they’re spending money with CPB) are experimenting with smart-phone apps and web applications that emphasize utility for the customer, not just trying to get a brand message across. A phone example is Nike’s Nike+ running shoe with an embedded chip that communicates data with Nike+ on an iPhone (or iPod). There’s a website and social training community built around the product and its personal data from you, so that you can do stuff like time yourself time on a specific route, then compare it to a friend who runs the same route at a different time — a virtual competition. The phone and online components are meant to sell Nike+, certainly, but they provide the Nike+ customer with a great training log and social tool. It’s not just about selling, but improving the shoe buyer’s life. Utility.

Apply this to news: When developing mobile apps, think utility, not just presenting news. An app that keeps track of local road construction projects and finds re-routes around them could be handy for local commuters, for example. It might be introduced one time to accompany a big story about all the local road projects under way due to the federal stimulus money coming into the community — but it could be used by commuters and residents long term, and re-marketed each time there’s another road-construction and traffic-delays story.

On the web, CPB presenters showed us their NCAA Final Four Bracket-o-matic Flash project created for Coca-Cola Zero. (Link is to video.) The idea was to make the NCAA basketball championship grid easy to fill out; instead of picking teams and inputing them into the grid based on who you think will win, there’s a series of sliders along the top that fills out the grid based on 8 variables that you adjust.

What struck me about this was the thin line between a soda company doing this vs. a news company producing the same sort of thing and selling advertising around it. The Bracket-o-matic would feel OK as an editorial online feature. Again, it provides utility as well as fun. Why did an advertiser do it and not a media company? Coca-Cola had the money to pay CPB to create it; most news companies don’t have the technical chops to pull something like this off.

More take-aways later. … Off to a meeting now…

My latest Editor & Publisher Online column has been published: “Real-time, Relevant Ads Matched With Real-time News? What a Concept!.”

This is a really interesting topic, as we’re closing in on being able to match ads in real time contextually with news events as they quickly grow popular. I interview the CEO of OneRiot, a Boulder social-search company working on this model.

Right now, news happens fast, but ads that complement news can’t be efficiently added to accompany fast-breaking, going-viral news. Get the two in sync and you have the potential for effective, high-CPM ads sold in large quantities.

Example: Tornado rips through a Dallas neighborhood, resulting in a flood of traffic to local news website. Instead of showing all those Internet visitors cheap remnant ads, site utilizes technology to match the story with relevant ads, such as contractors, builders, window replacement providers, plumbers, insurance companies, home clean-up crews, disaster relief, hotels, etc.

This isn’t an easy problem to solve, because it will take advertisers a while to alter how they operate and provide feeds of ads that can be used to match news as it happens. And of course, not every breaking news event represents appropriate contextual ad opportunities. But this is coming, and I think it could be an important growth agent for online advertising for the news industry.

As a journalist trained way back in the 1970s, it’s amusing to compare how today the online the goal is to match content and editorial for financial gain. In my early days as a newspaper copy editor, part of my job was to make sure that didn’t happen — e.g., keep the United Airlines display ad off the page about the plane crash.

Google Fast Flip launched this week as a public Google Labs beta, and I’ve been surprised at some of the skepticism about it. The main complaint is that it takes a step backward by displaying screen captures of popular articles from a selection of media websites and makes them the entry point to finding the best content on media sites. The idea and design seem a bit old-school to some critics.

I like Fast Flip a lot, for several reasons:

1. It’s an “alternative Google News” for those not wanting to be overwhelmed with selecting from thousands of media sources.
2. It’s a more comfortable interface for some people, especially, I would guess, older online users who are still most at ease with print-like design than with lists of headline links to choose from.
3. It’s not a replacement for Google News, but an alternative for those looking for a different way to find and read the best content from a selected group of quality sources.
4. It’s Google’s first time in sharing with publishers some of the money earned on its own pages. The search giant doesn’t share revenue from links to news websites’ content on Google News, so this is a significant change in policy, even if only experimental — a way for Google to directly support media publishers, including those who complain that Google is eating their lunch by profiting from links to their news.

Frankly, I’m feeling a bit vindicated by Google’s introduction of Fast Flip. Last April, I wrote several blog posts suggesting that it would be in Google’s self-interest to turn Google News into a news search service that shared ad revenue with publishers that are included in Google News:
Google could come to the rescue, but won’t?
How can newspapers help Google?
To Eric Schmidt: What happened to ‘Don’t Be Evil’?

I also sent e-mails in April to Krishna Bharat, Google Distinguished Researcher and creator and leader of Google News, suggesting that revenue-sharing with news publishers would be a good thing for both the news industry and Google (and, thus, society in general as citizens remained well informed by a healthier news sector). I never heard back from Bharat, even though I’d met him in person a few weeks earlier at Stanford University during a fellowship interview.

If you read through the comment threads on the blog items above, you’ll agree that this was not among the most popular ideas I’ve ever floated in my writing over the years. I got lots of pushback, much of it to the tune of: Google is just smarter than media publishers; Google owes the news industry nothing because it’s already giving news sites millions and millions of user visits, but the publishers aren’t smart enough to figure out how to make money from that.

You can read the links above if you care about my original (unpopular) argument, but the crux is that by sharing revenues, Google would prevent angry and scared news publishers from locking down their content online, AND it would make it politically possible to turn on the ad spigot for Google News because it would share some of its new revenues with the creators/publishers of the content it links to.

While Google didn’t follow my suggestion for opening up Google News for revenue sharing with news publishers, it has done so with a few dozen selected media companies that are taking part in Fast Flip. It’s a variation of what I suggested last April to a generally vigorous assault on the idea.

It’d be nice to think that my humble blog had something to do with the Fast Flip revenue-sharing model, but that’s likely wishful thinking. (If it did, perhaps some nice Google executive will share some of that big pile of G-cash with me. Ah, but life doesn’t work that way.)

Anyway, I’m happy to see Google executives decide that it might be in their interests to share some ad revenues with media publishers. Fast Flip will be an experiment we’ll all be watching closely. Perhaps it will lead to a news-industry revenue source that starts to chip away at the News Crisis we find ourselves in.

I’ve got yet another “micropatronage” service to tell you about. But while the other ones I’ve written about in recent months have the online user voluntarily ponying up some cash to support the websites and blogs that they visit or like, or the articles they value most — Kachingle, Contenture, Inamoon, Payyattention — this one lets the user financially support a website simply by voting “like” or “dislike” on articles. No money is extracted from the user’s wallet.

BeneVote, a new service in beta from a Silicon Valley company called Twixa, describes itself as “The sponsored voting widget for newspapers, blogs, and more.” The concept is quite simple, yet for all the writing I’ve done and thought given to micropatronage or voluntary financial support for websites and blogs, my mind hadn’t yet veered into the territory of “the user pays nothing.”

Here’s how BeneVote works: Website or blog publisher installs the Benevote widget, which adds a voting box at the bottom of each article. The user mouses over the BeneVote box and selects either “I like it” or “I don’t like it.” Clicking to vote then displays a small pop-up box that says, “Your votes help sponsor this site. Thanks!”, followed by an ad. (For now, it’s a Google AdSense text ad.)

You can probably guess the rest. Twixa counts the votes per participating site and takes the advertising money it earns from the pop-up boxes, subtracts its own percentage to operate the BeneVote service and earn a profit, and splits it among all the publishers based on how the vote-clicks are distributed.

BeneVote is touted as working alongside other micropatronage services. So a news site, say, could use Kachingle and earn money from “Kachinglers” who decide to financially support the site with a portion of their monthly $5 Kachingle payment, and also use BeneVote to earn money.

A side benefit, of course, is that BeneVote gives publishers feedback from readers about its content, though it’s pretty crude: A reader either “likes” or “dislikes” an article. Readers can see how other readers voted.

As with all the other micropatronage services I’ve written about, BeneVote is unlikely to “save journalism” or have website or blog publishers swimming in free cash. But it’s yet another revenue source to add to the stew. We’ll have to wait and see how well it works (as with the others listed above).

One last interesting tidbit about BeneVote: It’s being developed by the same team that created BitPass, the micropayments and paid-subscriptions service for digital content that’s been used by such companies as Microsoft, Disney, and Ziff-Davis.

I can’t imagine this is new, but it’s the first time I’ve gone to a restaurant and received a coupon at the table prompting me to use my cell phone to get a free item. Last night when my family and I went to Beau Jo’s Pizza in Boulder, we each got the coupon above. Send a text message to the address printed with the special code, and you get back a text message showing you what you’ve won, which you show to your waiter/waitress.

With our two phones between us, we had two chances and both got free salsa and chips. (To go with pizza? We passed on our “winnings.”) But some lucky texting diners might win a $100 gift certificate at the restaurant.

I hardly think this is the state of the art for mobile coupons, but it does work, whether the diner has the latest iPhone 3GS or an old brick or flip phone. It reminded me that to effectively use mobile (for advertising and promotions or for editorial purposes), you don’t have to get super sophisticated. The uncomplicated phone text message can be an effective mechanism that serves everyone, vs. an iPhone app that has a (large but) limited audience.

I was disappointed in Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote speech to the Newspaper Association of America today. (Audio here, courtesy of Bill Densmore. Transcript of Q&A portion of Schmidt’s session, thanks to Poynter.org.) Oh, it was a fine speech and Schmidt educated some of the backward-thinking publishers in the audience, no doubt, about what’s ahead.

But Schmidt has expressed his respect for newspapers and a desire to help them survive. Well, he’s not promoting newsPAPERS surviving, but rather their large newsrooms of reporters capable of well serving society’s need for watchdogs of the powerful. That’s a role that Google does not want to play. He thinks that newspapers should use the Internet to get 10 times their current audience online and with mobile (cutting back on print), and he thinks that advertising will (eventually) be their salvation.

I was hoping for more from Schmidt. With a few instructions to his managers, he could direct billions of dollars to content producers, including news organizations. I don’t get why he doesn’t do it.

Why should Daddy Googlebucks help those newspaper publishers who are too behind the times to understand how to survive in our new world? Well, first, I want Google to support quality news content, which may come from a newspaper company, a news-oriented start-up, or a quality blogger who produces news. So I’m not talking about Google saving just newspapers, but rather about the company financially supporting quality content and journalism.

Right now legacy news executives are panicking, especially newspapers. They’re discussing schemes to put news content behind walls, away from Google’s prying eyes, and despite many rational and convincing arguments as to why that is a DUMB idea except in special cases, the movement appears to be gaining speed. (As to why it’s dumb, I urge you to read this great piece by search guru (and ex-newspaperman) Danny Sullivan, “Google’s Love For Newspapers & How Little They Appreciate It,” and Steve Yelvington’s month-old advice, “Eight barriers to local paid content.”)

If news executives continue down this misguided path, this loss of quality content will not be good for Google (nor the public). Sure, if a bunch of newspapers led by dinosaur executives cut off their noses to spite their faces, new news entities will arise and journalism will live on after a short period of ugly transition where the watchdogs are few and the bad guys in government and business get away with more than usual. It can’t be in Google’s interest to let this happen, and the quality of the web content it thrives on wither, even if only for a year or two.

What can Google do? What order do I wish Schmidt would issue to the Google troops from his lofty office? Here are two possibilities:

1. Turn on ads for Google News, and share some of the pie
Google News already has started putting contextual ads on searches of Google News. (Example.) Why not go further and turn on ads for all of Google News? Click the sports news category and see Google ads in the right column. See them on the Google News homepage.

Of course, if Google did that now, the screams of “Google is making money from my content!” by the media dinosaurs would grow even louder. Some would remove themselves from Google’s reach. But Google could calm down those ancient media beasts by simply starting a program where any publisher that’s tracked by Google News could participate. It would count the number of clicks through to a story that any publisher gets, then at the end of the month distribute a pile of money based on popularity of the various news sources.

The money pool would be filled with the money that Google advertisers paid when users clicked on the ads while using Google News. Google would allot a percentage of the revenue to be split among the publishers.

Why would Google do such a thing? Because going whole-hog on ads on Google News would incense publishers; doing it in a limited way (just search queries, as is the case now) would get less resistance, but Google keeps all the money. I’d think that full-out Google News advertising and Google voluntarily paying out a slice of Google News ad-click revenues to news publishers would mollify the seething and panicking news executives, and probably leave more money in Google’s account. Perhaps some of those dumb proposals to lock down news content would become unnecessary with a healthy revenue stream from Google for quality news publishers. (I emphasize “quality” because this simple scheme would reward the most money to news sites that get the most clickthroughs from Google News.)

I don’t believe that the news industry should demand this. Calling out the lawyers to demand that Google share Google News ad revenues seems like the wrong approach. But Schmidt says he wants to help pay for quality news content and keep reporters working. Google could send waves of money to news producers who continue to give their content away for free online. (Ditto for blogs, if such a program were instituted on Google Blogsearch.)

Based on Schmidt’s words to the NAA today, he thinks that Google can just get more people to click through Google News headlines, in such large numbers that advertising revenue will support news organizations online. I doubt that, and suggest that Schmidt take one step further back and get news publishers money directly from participating in a Google News ad-share program.

How about it, Eric?

2. The perpetual Google pledge drive
This second idea could complement the first. … Not long ago I ran across and wrote about Silicon Valley start-up Kachingle, and I fell in love with the concept. It’s a simple voluntary subscription that you (the online user) pay $5 a month for (or whatever amount you decide), and then that money is divided up each month among websites that you LIKE and that you VISIT. Publishers become Kachingle participants for free and display a medallion, and when Kachinglers who like your site visit, you get some of their money based on how often they visited your site compared to other sites they’ve told Kachingle they like.

It’s a bit NPR-ish in that you voluntarily donate to all the websites and blogs you like; and if you are a cheapskate and want all your content online free, don’t pay but still see everything. Like the scheme above, Kachingle supports quality content sites; popular news sites presumably will get more money from their fans. And money flows automatically, month-after-month, with regular credit card deductions from Kachingle member accounts.

Google could easily support this on Google News, by indicating when its source news sites (and blogs) are Kachingle members, and encouraging GN users to support news and online content by becoming a Kachingle member.

Why would Google to this? Pretty much the answer is the same as for idea No. 1 above. By using the power of Google’s many millions of users to drive voluntary regular contributions to Kachingle, Google would be financially supporting news sites and bloggers who produce quality content. Again, this would be a move to prevent panicky publishers from taking their content away from Google News because they’d have yet another revenue source to support them.

Schmidt told the NAA earlier today:

“If you see a headline what I want you to do is I want you to think, ‘Oh that’s interesting, I want to know more,’ and then based on that I want you to click to the newspaper Web site or to Wikipedia or to wherever. If we can build products — and we have teams at Google working on this — to roughly work like that where there’s a one-liner that’s interesting and you click and go into layer after layer after layer of information — and by the way, not just text but also video and entertainment, and so forth and so on — that’s personalized, we think we can build a business — again, with you guys — with significant advertising resources, where the advertising is targeted to the content. To me that’s the only solution we’ve come up with to this problem.”

Well, that’s going to take a while. Meanwhile, major metro newspapers, some in existence for 150 years, have died, and more will die. The simple ideas above would allow Google to quickly address the media crisis in a meaningful way, AND it would benefit Google.

Mr. Schmidt, I don’t expect you or Google to single-handedly save journalism and the news industry. Yet you have the power to improve the situation significantly. And it’s in your own interest.

What are you waiting for?