Two major metropolitan dailies plan to put part of their online coverage behind pay walls, according to News & Technology.

The Dallas Morning News, the A.H. Belo Corp. flagship, in the next six months will wall off staff-written stories as well as content about the Dallas Cowboys. Wire service reports and breaking news stories with fewer than 150 words would be free, and seven-day-a-week print subscribers will continue to get it all without additional charges.

The Providence (R.I.) Journal, another Belo property, is also looking at limiting the amount of website content available to nonsubscribers, N&T said.

The N&T report did not say how much the Dallas paper would charge for website access.

McClatchy’s The State of Columbia, S.C., is making its GoGameCocks.com site require a  membership costing $50 a year or $10 a month. Fans of University of South Carolina sports who agree to pay the $50 fee will receive one week for free, during which time they can opt out if they aren’t satisfied. Print subscribers get access for free.

For starters, the newspaper will no longer have separate managing editors overseeing its News, Sports, Money and Life sections. “The newsroom instead will be broken up into a cluster of  ‘content rings’ each headed up by editors who will be appointed later this year,” the Associated Press says. The paper’s current Life ME will be executive editor of content.

USA Today’s restructuring will “usher in a new way of doing business that aligns sales efforts with the content we produce,” according to a slide show presented to USA Today’s staff, which The AP obtained.

The executive editor of content will have a “collaborative relationship” with USA Today’s newly appointed vice president of business development, according to one slide.

The paper will “focus less on print … and more on producing content for all platforms (Web, mobile, iPad and other digital formats),” the slide show said.

The AP says USA Today’s circulation has fallen from 2.3 million in 2007 to an average of 1.83 million during the six months ending in March. Advertising has fallen by about 50 percent between 2006 and the quarter ending this past June.

Here’s the news release.

Total online spending should amount to $51.9 billion next year, according to Editor & Publisher’s reading of the study.

“The big driver will be targeted display (such as banner ads) advertising, which we expect to grow almost 60 percent in 2011, reaching $10.9 billion for national and local combined,” the memo says. Streaming video, now in reach of even the smallest advertisers, should also grow by 60 percent.

Run-of-site display advertising, which Borrell says is less productive, is expected to decline 14 percent next year to $8.2 billion in local and national spending. National paid search ads will also fall by double digits in 2011, the firm says.

“While papers like the Kansas City Star continue to pursue the traditional model of publishing only the main title and a free once-a-week advertising product sent to the homes of non-subscribers, the ABC [Audit Bureau of Circulations] reports that papers like the Chicago Tribune and Dallas Morning News have created such a wide variety of products that the flagship paper produces just 56 percent of the average weekday circulation in each of their respective markets,” Mutter writes.

As circulations fall, “foresighted publishers are creating niche products to try to capture readers who historically were unlikely to buy the legacy newspaper – and, of course, the advertisers who covet them as customers,” he adds.

The Tribune and Morning News both publish periodicals aimed at young adults and those who prefer to read Spanish-language publications. The Tribune also publishes a free tabloid written by and for teenagers, and the Morning News delivers a free, weekly TMC, or total-market-coverage, advertising product, like many McClatchy papers produce.

Mutter predicts that the once flagship, general interest newspaper will eventually become simply one product among several niche publications that successful publishers produce.

“McClatchy’s purchase of the Knight Ridder Inc. newspaper chain, for $4.1 billion in 2006, ranked the worst of the 100 on Bloomberg’s list, with McClatchy shares underperforming the Bloomberg Advertising Age AdMarket 50 Index by 93 percentage points,” the article says. “Sacramento, California-based McClatchy borrowed cash to buy the chain as newspaper real-estate advertising plunged. Elaine Lintecum, McClatchy’s treasurer, declined to comment.”

The move made McClatchy, which was the nation’s eighth-largest newspaper publisher, the nation’s third-largest chain (once it sold off some Knight Ridder papers), but saddled it with enormous debt just as the industry began its ongoing decline.

More than half of the 100 mergers and acquisitions should never have happened, Bloomberg says.

“Nielsen says viewers watch between 40 percent and 50 percent of commercials during DVR playback,” Media Daily News says. “These numbers have climbed from previous estimates, where viewers were watching anywhere between 30 percent to 40 percent.”

As Richard Tamborrino, key accounts manager at The Miami Herald, says in his comment, “This contention is absolutely ridiculous…the whole concept of recording programming is for ‘on-demand’ entertainment…You can watch a one-hour drama in 44 minutes, and it’s being done with great regularity.”

Use of DVRs has risen 90 percent since 2007. “DVR penetration among (Nielsen’s) national people markets is at 37 percent, with local people meter markets at 41 percent,” the article says.

“While the digital news world seems consumed with conversations about paywalls and memberships, it is old-fashioned print circulation revenue that is the gainer in the post-80/20 formulas,” Doctor writes for Nieman Journalism Lab. “Sure, advertising’s ski slope decline has greatly altered the 80/20. So has, though, the significant up-pricing of both subscriptions and single copies over the past three years.”

A leader in the trend is apparently The Dallas Morning News, which raised the price of monthly subscriptions from $18 to $30 and is earning 38 percent of its revenue from circulation, 54 percent from advertising, and 8 percent from “contract printing plus,” he says.

The Dallas paper’s parent, A.H. Belo, reported a 6.6 percent increase in circulation revenue in the second quarter, while The New York Times Company reported a 3.2 percent increase and Scripps had a 4.5 percent increase in the first quarter (Scripps’ 2Q report is due Monday).

“Significantly, I think, each of those companies may have done a better job of minimizing newsroom cuts and reinvesting — at least a little — in that now higher-priced product,” Doctor says.

Better than whom? Better than McClatchy, which reported a 2.5 percent circulation revenue decline in the second quarter (and has raised prices); Lee, which was down 4.4 percent; and Gatehouse, which was down 2.5 percent.

Doctor has the current splits for each of the four publishers, and for McClatchy, the one we follow, it’s pretty much the newly declared old-hat model of 20 percent circulation, 76 percent ads and 4 percent other.

The report by the AP’s Mike Liedtke says McClatchy’s 8 percent fall in ad revenue is the best performance since a 5 percent decline in the first quarter of 2007. But, as he also points out, today’s year-to-year comparisons are against poor performances. That’s 8 percent less than a number that was bad to begin with.

Net income for the quarter was $7.3 million, down from $42.2 million a year ago. Total revenue fell 6 percent to $342 million, the AP says.

The company is blaming the earnings plunge on “higher interest costs as we extended debt maturities,” according to the Sacramento Business Journal’s report.  Interest payments for the quarter were up 44 percent to $49 million compared to $34 million at the same time last year after restructuring in February that extended repayment to 2017.

McClatchy was struggling with a debt of $1.8 billion as of the end of June, the SBJ says.

The company also sold about 200,000, or 8 percent, fewer copies of its weekday newspapers this past quarter, though higher prices eased that hit a little.

McClatchy management projects a 4 to 6 percent revenue decline year-to-year for the coming third quarter.

For the first time, fewer survey respondent – 56 percent – ranked newspapers as  important or very important sources of information for them than those who said the Internet (78 percent) and television (68 percent) were important or very important sources of information. The number for newspapers was down from 60 percent in the school’s 2008 survey.

But, 61 percent of Internet users said less than half of online information is reliable, and 14 percent said that little or none of it is reliable. The latter figure is up from previous years, according to Media Daily News.

Looks like ease of use – the computer, TV or mobile device people are connected to anyway vs. a different copy of the newspaper arriving in the driveway each day – is more important that the information itself.

More than 20 percent of respondents said they would not miss the printed newspaper.

The downward spiral in print newspaper circulation no doubt will be accelerated by  advances in online delivery of news content through e-readers or other handheld electronic devices,” Jeffrey I. Cole, director of  the school’s Center for the Digital Future, said in a statement quoted by Editor & Publisher. “After years of aborted attempts, these advances finally appear to be practical and  affordable methods of providing electronic news content to readers.  If so, what will that mean for  the future of the traditional print newspaper?”

Meanwhile, 70 percent of Internet users said online advertising is “annoying,” and half said they never click on Web ads. But 55 percent said they would rather put up with Web advertising than pay for content.

“Though the percentage increase is certainly off some weak numbers last year, it does indicate that the weak industry is stabilizing,” the cable channel says.

Crains says that luxury magazines are also making a slow comeback, pointing to Vogue, which will show a spike of 100 advertising pages, or 23 percent over a year ago, for September.

“But even 23 percent growth for the September issue — in which designers and fashion companies display their next season’s lineups — barely puts Vogue back in the league it was in a few years ago,” Crains says of the Conde Nast title.

This year’s number translate into 529 ad pages, while Vogue’s September 2007 issue had a record 727 ad pages — and weighed in at four pounds, nine ounces.

But, the New York Post points out that Vogue still can’t touch InStyle.  “InStyle, one of the few to have a good September a year ago, was up 56 pages and 16 percent with 403 ad pages,” the Post says.

“Since January, however, InStyle, Publisher Connie Anne Phillips has sold 1,791 ad pages, up by 306 pages, or 21 percent, from a year earlier.”

Elle sold 57.2 more ad pages for September 2010 compared to 2009, and is up 10 percent year-to-date, “the slowest of any of the major fashion titles,” according to the Post. Harper’s Bazaar sold 31.8 more ad pages this September compared to last, and is up 13 percent for the year.