Agenda at Newspaper Summit: Survive

A group of newspaper muckety-mucks converged on a hotel in a Chicago suburb to discuss the state of their troubled business Thursday.

But about the only thing to come out of the meeting a day later has been further losses for old-line media stocks and talk of possible antitrust violations.

The most pressing item on the meeting's itinerary, according to reports -- and possibly the most pressing issue in the print-media industry right now -- was whether and how to begin charging readers for content online.

In the wake of the meeting, chatter among the chattering classes Friday was that, perhaps, the meeting had violated antitrust laws. Could these publishers, in other words, be colluding to set prices? Or could they have been discussing how best to synchronize their collective shift to a so-called pay-wall model?

Only a few publications' web sites have chosen to go that route -- News Corp.'s Wall Street Journal primary among them. All the rest have been lax to be the first out of the gate to charge for their stuff online.

Tellingly, an antitrust lawyer was present at the meeting, which bore the helpful title: "Models to Lawfully Monetize Content."

Representatives of the New York Times(NYT Quote), Gannett(GCI Quote), EW Scripps(SSP Quote), McClatchy(MNI Quote), Lee Enterprises(LEE Quote), The Associated Press, Freedom Communications, Hearst Newspapers, Advance Publications, MediaNews Group and Philadelphia Media Holdings all attended the meeting, which was hosted by the Newspaper Association of America, a trade group.

Notably absent from the above list were the Washington Post(WPO Quote) and News Corp.(NWS Quote), though it was unclear if that was the full list of attendees.