All around the world, new initiatives are being sought to counteract this structural crisis :

In the US, The Wall Street Journal recently announced that it is introducing a sophisticated micro-payment scheme enabling online readers to purchase articles à la carte.  Journalism Online readers will also be offered the same system this autumn while various US dailies have decided to propose a more hybrid system : reducing the number of editions available on newsstands while developing their online editions.

Launched in 2002, the Spanish website Elconfidencial.com has already proved that it can be successful : it has been profitable since 2005 thanks to quality content which has attracted two million readers and, consequently, enabled it to charge profitable advertising rates.

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corp, owner of  The Wall Street Journal, The Sun and The Times has just radically changed his strategy by deciding on the one hand to suspend the publication of his free London evening newspaper and, on the other, to charge for access to the websites of his paid daily newspapers.  In France, leading publications such as Le Monde, Libération, L’Express and Le Figaro  are looking for ways in which to offer free content to the general public while charging subscribers for premium content.

While some of these initiatives have yet to prove their effectiveness, they do demonstrate that the profession is undergoing a total mutation in order to satisfy demand which has never been so strong, even though it has radically changed. * Although it might seem paradoxical, the time has maybe never been better for journalists since they have never had so many potential readers.  But how can they continue to be journalists and yet still earn a living ?

The time has come to find a new role model.

*In the US, over the past 15 years, daily newspapers have lost 20 million readers, down from 69 to 49 million.  Yet during the same period, online information readership went from 0 to 75 million.