AMONG THE STRUGGLING DOT-COMS that have seen layoffs, cutbacks, or total closures in recent weeks, a few have been outfits that specialized in “content” of a written or journalistic or entertainment nature.

Some critics see the troubles at some news and opinion sites as proof that either “old-media” publishing and broadcasting companies don’t understand how information flows best on the Net; or that the very notion of trying to make a business model from online content’s doomed to futility.

Some of these critics note that certain low-budget news sites have stayed afloat while more heavily-funded content sites have floundered. Many of the survivor sites are weblogs or portals, providing little more than thoughtfully-curated links to content created and posted elsewhere.

(Many of the stories linked from these link sites are, ironically enough, on the online auxiliaries of old-media newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters.)

Other critics are pointing to a concept called “open media” as a more Net-savvy, more populistic, and more modern alternative to the established, commercial “closed media” and the content sites that try to operate like old media.

The idea of “open media” seems to involve discussion boards and collections of user-contributed info; of voluntary info-sharing (nobody pays; nobody’s paid) rather than the works of career journalists.

It harkens back to the ’80s Bulletin Board System and Usenet days of modem connections as vehicles for written rhetoric, debating, arguing, and word-spreading. On that level, it’s a good thing.

But that’s not journalism.

The various flavors of critics who scoff gleefully at concent-site troubles conveniently forget that the whole dot-com sector’s seeing fiscal iffiness. Net-retailers, portal sites, search-engine sites–the red ink’s flowing all over, and the venture-capital and IPO infusions are getting scarcer.

(The critics also forget that periodical publishing, which “content” websites are essentially part of, is a high-startup-time business. New major print magazines typically take as long as five years to become profitable.)

And if “open media” means nobody pays, how are you going to get any professional reporting or research (as opposed to deskbound opinionating, partisan propaganda, or disguised press releases)?

Ad revenue, by itself, doesn’t seem to be the answer to paying for professional content-makers. (Particularly if all you’re selling are banner ads for other dot-coms, themselves now oft-struggling.)

Yet, at least so far, Net users have proven unwilling to pay subscription prices for any content that doesn’t facilitate (1) stock-market betting, (2) sports betting, or (3) masturbation.

In the “open source” software community, from which the “open media” people are getting some of their hype words, programming code is given and shared for free. It works, even as a business model for professional programmers, because these hardcore code-meisters can use that code in the business of providing in-house and custom programming services for institutional clients; they can also sell documentation and service contracts associated with the code.

If you can think of an online-content business model that might work (“Micropayments” of a few cents per page viewed? T-shirt sales? Grants? Product-placement fees?), lemme know.

I might become the first to try it.

TOMORROW: Don’t make Kozmo.com employees submit to background checks; give them a “Kozmo Quiz.”

ELSEWHERE:

• This scientist’s got an invention that, if perfected, could prevent STD infection in women. Drug companies apparently think there’s no potential profit in that (huh?)….