The Wall St. Journal now has a slick “style” magazine supplement called WSJ. (Yes, the period is part of the name.)

Its fall cover depicts a gold-painted apple and the headline “Forbidden Fruit: Selling Luxury in the Age of Abstinence.”

Which is precisely what the section’s articles and advertisements proceed to do.

Page after page (88 in all) lauds the charms of gaudy wristwatches, private jets, Lincolns with “eco” features, fashions (including fur items), jewelry, wines, boots, hotels, purses, and accessories for rich white people of all adult ages and genders.

The cover, though, really says it all.

How do you sell things/services/experiences of little to no practical value, at a time when even CEOs pretend to be regular folks trudging through thes times like the rest of us?

By re-imaging them as icons of daring rebellion.

Be un-PC! Thrift, practicality—BORING! Show the petty little people of this world you don’t give a damn about them. Look as unashamedly silly as any “white gangsta” teen hanging in the malls.

…what the odd temporary readerboard sign for a Hal Ashby film festival was doing up outside the Showbox one day last week, we now know. It was part of a Target TV commercial with Pearl Jam. Really.

Jeff Bercovici at Conde Nast Portfolio believes the online-only seattlepi.com is “a worthy experiment” that “won’t work,” because he doesn’t expect Hearst to keep it going long enough to hit any fiscal stride.

And remember, loyal readers: The new P-I site really launches on Wednesday, and may or may not look like it does today.

Thanks to Charles Brubaker, I’ve rediscovered Ted Rall’s three-part column on the state of the newspaper biz in that simpler time known as November 2007. (Here are the links to installments one, two, and three.)

Rall begins with the now too-familiar roll call of woes besotting the newsprint industry; principally, the woe that online ads bring far, far less money per reader than print ads do.

Rall ends with the suggestion that the three national dailies might thrive while mid-market local papers wither away.

Instead, the recessionary rains have fallen on all newsprint creatures, great and small.

…since Hearst started a 60-day countdown to either sell, scrap, or drastically shrink the Post-Intelligencer. So far, the corporate brass have publicly issued nothing. Privately, they’ve made lowball offers to a few staffers for an online-only P-I. Several people who’ve gotten these offers have reportedly declined them.

All this time, meanwhile, P-I staffers and friends have quietly (and less-quietly) sought one or more buyers for the paper from among the city’s rich and civic-minded. Now, Slog hears rumors that a potential sale just might (might, mind you) be in the works. Or it could be just rumors.

I’m thinking of becoming a freelance book packager, leveraging the lessons I’ve learned over the years.

Here’s a sample lesson:

Book publicity is a two-headed monster. Or rather, it wants you to become a two-headed monster. Your first head’s supposed to quietly conform to hidebound notions of tweed-suited authenticity and NPR-mellow good taste. Your second head’s supposed to go all manic and aggressively hustle after every sale like Billy Mays hawking OxyClean in a late-night commercial.

Hearst is leaking a few hints about a potential online-only P-I. As many of us had feared, it’s shaping up as a barer-than-bare-bones operation, with few of the original-reporting positions that we in the save-the-news crowd are trying to save.

The SeaTimes notes two limited experiments in print newspapers going online-only, and finds them both relatively low-budget efforts relying on subsidies from larger organizations.

The NYT remembers that nonprofit journalistic endeavors have been around since before the Web. One of these, Mother Jones, is hanging in there fiscally, but is not immune to the larger economy’s ebbs and flows.

Chuck Taylor concludes his own “Life in a Zero-Newspaper Town” series with his own answer to funding the new news: There is no one answer. Instead, news Web sites will need what the motivational coaching industry calls “multiple streams of income.”

Nathan Richardson offers some simple things the big Web portals could do to help news sites. One suggestion: Google, etc. could vow to link directly to original-reporting sites, rather than to all those slice-n’-dice aggregation sites. (How would that affect a site like this, which offers both original prose and linkage?)

Alan Mutter believes news sites can indeed charge for online content. The trick: Have some content people will want enough to pay for. That’s not rewritten press releases, human-interest homilies, or ambulance chasing. It’s comprehensive news-you-can-use coverage of consumer, business/financial, and governmental topics.

That’s another ingredient in what I’m calling microbrew news—stuff people really care about reading, stuff people will go out of their way to get.

Turns out there are actually two separate groups trying to jump-start new local news Web sites to unofficially replace the P-I, or to compete with any surviving remnant of the P-I site.

Besides the “Packers model” group mentioned here on Wednesday, there’s also a team of P-I staffers planning what Sandeep at Publicola calls a “non-profit news entity, primarily focused on investigative journalism covering the Western states, which would be funded by foundations and other major donors.” Its inspiration is ProPublica, a foundation-funded “non-profit newsroom” specializing in big national stories “with moral force.”

This site would spend money and, more importantly, time on the kind of original research that commentary-based news sites simply aren’t set up to perform. It could also offer serious political, economic, and civic-planning news for a readership of hardcore wonks, activists, and organizers.

This product and market differentiation is good.

We don’t need two or three new organizations doing exactly what the P-I‘s done but on skeletal budgets. But two or three new organizations, each taking complementary but different approaches to telling us what’s going on—now that’s microbrew news.

Finally, someone’s announced a concrete (albeit still liquid concrete) plan to start a new, pro local-news site in town, no matter what Hearst finally chooses to do with the Post-Intelligencer brand.

A group of P-I vets, including reporter Kerry Murakami, are planning a local news site to be partly funded by voluntary reader “memberships.” They’re calling their scheme “the Packers Model,” after the Green Bay Packers’ fan-ownership structure. (The site’s organization may or may not end up emulating the Packers’ system of many small shareholders. It could, instead, be set up as a cooperative or a nonprofit.)

They’re going ahead with this plan without waiting to hear Hearst’s plan. This is good. Hearst is acting exactly within its reputation as one of the nation’s most secretive corporations. It could close the print P-I any day now (or any month now), and could relaunch or scrap the paper’s web site concurrently.

The Stranger‘s Slog team has its collective doubts about the plan, and about the “Packers model.” Why would thousands of individual citizens plunk down $25 a month, or even $25 a year, for a free-access Web site bent on carrying on the P-I legacy without its name?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because, while this new site probably won’t get the P-I‘s name, ad accounts, or archives, it would have some of the paper’s best known staffers. (They don’t know which ones yet; that all depends on whom they can recruit, and whom, if anyone, Hearst keeps around.)

It would be responsible, and responsive, to its stakeholders.

It would cover local/regional politics for readers who really give a darn about local/regional politics. Less heat; more light. More wonky details of the legislative process. More explanations about why we should become interested in, say, Port of Seattle mismanagement or a suburban mayoral race.

This is what I meant last week, when I compared the difference between the new news and the old news to that between microbreweries and the megaproducers of swill lagers.

Like microbrewers, new-news organizations will be smaller but more plentiful. They’ll craft their product with more care. They’ll appeal to a wider range of specific preferences/interests.

And, yeah, most of their product will have a stronger kick.

This “Packers model” team and a rump P-I site could both exist. Or one or the other, or neither.

My wish is for as many “voices” as the Web can carry.

Which, while finite, is a very large number indeed.

The legendary radio commentator began his national career in 1951 with what, at the time, was a standard program format—15 minutes of news headlines mixed with personal opinions. Harvey outlasted all of that format’s other, now forgotten practitioners (Lowell Thomas, Fulton Lewis Jr., Gabriel Heatter, etc.). Like many of these forebearers, Harvey maintained an attitude of just-plain-folks populism while he advocated conservative policies that pleased big corporate advertisers. And like a lot of radio conservatives past and present, his “hot” personality translated poorly into the “cooler” aesthetic of television.

Both the Weekly and the Stranger have big feature stories this week about the P-I‘s probable-but-maybe-not demise next month. Neither story contains any actual info about the paper’s fate. If anyone at the P-I or parent Hearst Corp. knows anything, they’re not saying.

This could just mean Hearst is being the secretive, private bunch it’s been since ol’ Wm. Randolph H. died in ’51.

Or it might mean a deal’s being slowly, quietly negotiated with a potential purchaser; said deal may, if it exists, still collapse or succeed before we hear about it.

Or it might mean Hearst’s seriously thinking about maintaining an online-only P-I but is still sorting out what form it might take.

Or it might not mean a darned thing.

One actual piece of news in the Stranger article concerned an attempt by the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild to explore starting up its own local-news Web site. No matter how the P-I saga plays out, we need more local info sources, not fewer.

…print news can survive by transitioning to digital printing, using what are essentially souped-up laser printers in multiple locations—perhaps even a printing machine at every sales outlet.

Small acknowledges this would require great capital expenditures from what are often debt-laden publishers. He also acknowledges that digital printing’s currently more expensive per copy than offset printing, and a lot more expensive than the hi-volume printing used by newspapers. But he thinks that could change.

Paul also briefly mentions Printcasting, a fledgling software platform that promises to easily turn ad-supported Web sites into ad-supported .pdf files for either home or commercial printing.

The demo images at Printcasting’s site reveal some pretty bland looking design templates. I hope the final software, when released, offers more visual flexibility.

Speaking of which, page design for 8.5 x 11-sized paper pages or screens is a far different animal from design for current Web pages, which in turn is a far different animal from design for broadsheet or tabloid pages. A “newspaper” designed at that size for home PC printers or for “eInk” devices would likely take on a more magazine-y or newsletter-y appearance. I can think of only one print publication in that size that maintains a poppy, newsy aesthetic—The Hollywood Reporter.

Jack Shafer believes there’s good precedent for charging users for online content. But it has to be content people really, really want, and it should be packaged in some form other than what we now know of as Web pages.

The “general news” sections of newspapers, and their affiliated Web sites, typically provide the opposite of what an online user could be persuaded to pay for. Based on theories of storytelling that go back to the days of street-corner newsboys, papers slice and dice the local events of the day into simple narratives that can support flashy headlines and cute or shocking images.

Consumers, we’ve learned, will pay for content that will guide them toward deciding where to invest and/or gamble (cf. the paid-access portions of wsj.com and espn.com). Business people will pay for information that’s relevant to their particular industries (cf. the Puget Sound Business Journal).

How can these lessons be applied to coverage of local government, politics, civic planning, social trends, and spot news?

That will be a topic for a later post.

…Nicholas Carr believes ad-supported online news will become profitable once the supply/demand imbanance is resolved—i.e., when a lot more news organizations go out of business.

It’s only natural for newspaper people to think in a formula-driven, routine-driven manner. It’s how they’ve gotten their product out every day these past decades.

Inventing new products/services for the new media age takes a different kind of thinking. A lot of people are trying to retrain newspaper people into this new way. They include the Next Newsroom Project, Brandon Mendelson, Mark Potts, Alan Mutter, Steve Outing, Philip Meyer, Jane Stevens, Dan Vigil, Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirky, my pal Paul Andrews, and ex-Microsoftie Michael Kinsley.

These folks have a consensus on many points. For instance, they all believe online news is both more populist and more niche-market than print news.

They disagree on by-the-slice or “micropayment” systems for news sites. Some believe they’d probably be more trouble than they’d be worth. Others, including Andrews, believe a workable scheme for subscriptions or one-shot purchases can be figured out; it’ll just take a little ingenuity.

As per the local situation with the endangered Post-Intelligencer, we’re talking about three scenarios here:

1) Preserving both the print and online P-I under new ownership, with the goal of making the combined operation self-supporting or close to it;

2) Preserving seattlepi.com alone, either under Hearst or new management;

3) Starting one or more all-new, all-online info ventures.

A lot of the local community talk this past month has concerned option 3, the only one that could proceed no matter what Hearst chooses to do.

Unlike a lot of folks in this conversation, I believe option 1 is both preferable and possible.

But it’ll take new ownership willing and able to shoulder continuing losses while evolving the paper and the Web site into new models. These models may or may not include online subscriptions or per-story payments. They may or may not include .pdf files or downloads for “e-ink” readers such as Amazon’s Kindle.

They will include many of the steps the P-I‘s already begun—staff and freelance blogs, other online-only content, community outreach, all-day site updates.

I’d revise or dump the joint operating agreement with the Seattle Times, a company that’s recently been proven lousy at generating ad revenue.

But I’d keep a printed paper, every damn day. A print product adds brand value to the Web property. It enables many kinds of combo ad and sponsorship deals. It keeps the P-I tangibly visible in stores, restaurants, buses, and street corners. And there’s still money to be made in print ads and inserts.

But the online dog would wag the print tail.

The site would have the full coverage and more, from a professional reporting team plus stringers and community bloggers.

The paper would be a compact-sized digest (perhaps free, perhaps without home delivery). It would offer the key pieces of the Web site’s coverage, for those readers who still prefer print. This would bring the print product at least closer to profitability, keeping the newsroom more-or-less intact while the quest for an optimal online business model continues.

As we mentioned on Monday, part of the key to holding a loyal online audience (and, potentially, commanding higher online ad rates) is to create a more direct, more honest relationship with that audience. Among other things, it means offering material people really want to know about.

The sports, business, arts, and lifestyle departments already offer plenty of that. There are people who really want to know about the new Seahawks coach, or about who’s performing in the clubs tonight, or about Starbucks’ latest marketing gimmick.

The “general news” section needs to become just as needed.

And it can.

The national success of Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and their brethren show that politics, economics, and similarly mundane topics can draw and keep enthralled audiences, if they’re presented by writers who can tell compelling stories.

Again, the P-I, with its continuing heritage of oldtime Hearstian populism, usually has more compelling local news content than the Times. The latter remains stuck in its longtime “what the Chamber of Commerce wants to tell you” mode of operation.

Here’s my list of what should be the essential reporting beats of any major local news operation, with or without the P-I brand. Some of them might be outsourceable to freelancers. Some of them might be doubled-up (one person servicing two or more beats). Your own idealized local newsroom might swap out some of these assignments for others:

Local news:

• City government
• County government
• State government
• Legal/courts
• Seattle neighborhoods
• The region (Eastside, south end, north end)
• Police
• Transportation
• Science/biotech
• Environment
• K-12 education
• Higher education
• Political columnists (2)
• Human interest columnists (2)
• Investigative unit (2)
• Breaking news/general assignment (at least 2)

Opinion:

• Opinion editor/columnist
• Forums/comments editor
• Editorial cartoonist

Business/economy:

• Editor/columnist
• Aerospace
• Tech
• Retail
• Real estate
• Labor/workplace
• Economy
• Port
• General assignment

Arts:

• Editor/columnist
• Film
• Stage
• Pop music
• Classical/dance/opera
• Visual art
• Books
• TV/radio
• Restaurants
• Calendars/general assignment

Life:

• Editor (and syndicated-features buyer)
• Food
• Fashion
• Travel
• Home/garden
• Outdoors
• Health
• Culture/lifestyles

Sports:

• Editor/columnist (2)
• Mariners
• Seahawks
• UW football
• Men’s college basketball
• Women’s college basketball/Storm
• High school sports
• Sounders/general assignment
• Participant sports/outdoor recreation

And, of course, there’d be ad sellers (all of whom would work on both print and online ads), IT people, admin staff, designers, a few photographers (though reporters would also be equipped with digicams), and, yes, copy editors.

This scheme would preserve at least half of today’s P-I staff positions. That’s a lot more than what some observers believe is feasible.

But this particular concept is about holding the line, preserving the ongoing production of first-level, relevant local information while developing a new business model to support it.

And who’s going to do this?

My amateur number-crunching skills tell me this plan could cut the P-I‘s losses within a year, from more than $1 million a month to less than $300,000. This shortfall should drop further as new revenue sources develop. (These might include online section sponsorships, paid access to investment databases, direct online sales of merchandise and event tickets, and, eventually, paid online subscriptions.)

But it’ll lose money before it makes money. Like any new or reinvented business venture.

It would probably take more than one investor to shoulder this. (Or, if the nonprofit route’s chosen, more than one donor.)

We’ll need a coalition of the local mighty and the local good. People closer to the P-I than I are already trolling some of these still-rich people.

But there’s one name I’d especially troll for if I were them.

It’s a guy who’s currently in the business of charging for content. Digital content. Verbal digital content. Ephemeral, periodical, verbal digital content.

Don’t call me, Mr. Bezos. You should contact Roger Oglesby direct.