Ryan Pitts (Assistant Managing Editor in charge of SROnline): Without getting into hard numbers, The Spokesman-Review *is* making profits from what we do online, and honestly our investment of resources is not that huge. We work hard to avoid duplication of effort, and as much as possible we fit online publication into the workflow of all the journalists here. We only have a few specialized online folks in the newsroom (two developers and a producer), and we own some servers, but really our online costs are just a fraction of what we spend to provide a print publication. Not investing in the web would never have made a measurable difference in print. I'd argue, rather, that it would have absolutely killed us. Ryan's full statement to Brent re: SR Online here.

DFO: Brent suggests that he'd charge for a product like HucksOnline. But I'm almost certain that such a move would kill what we have here. I'm with Ryan (check .pdf) when he says that journalists get into the business to inform and empower the public. I'd hate to see a limitation to my work here, created by a pay-only firewall. What do you think?