Traditional newspapers who are trying to prevent themselves from going under by getting online are find that they are not doing as well as they hoped.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer folded its print edition last month and went online only and 30 former journalists from another defunct daily, the Rocky Mountain News, launched a news website called INDenverTimes.com and set a goal of attracting 50,000 paying subscribers. Needless to say that neither are meeting their targets.

INDenverTimes.com announced it had not met its goal of 50,000 paying subscribers and "will not pursue the original business model."  In other words 50,000 people would not pay to visit a website for content they could get for free.  In fact only 3,000 seemed to have subscribed.

When the mainstream press is saying that perhaps the future of online journalism is as shaky as a Roman disco, most of the online press which is making money also had a good look at the figures and thought they are doing it all wrong.

For a start no one will pay for a subscription. Magazines that have tried it have found their traffic dry up fast. Secondly 30 journalists doing what? Online magazines and newspapers are profitable when it is a few hardworking hacks churning out tons of copy at 4am for sod all cash, not to mention a handful of subs going through their stories for mistakes. (Not really, I don't fix anything, I just go through them so I could poke fun at you guys. sub.ed.)

We imagine that these would be 30 US hacks who spend all day writing 500 words about themselves and their families before burying the story in the 12 paragraph. Such precious snowflakes often charge a bomb for their work and online no one will read past the fifth paragraph unless they are really bored. Still here? Must be Monday morning.

SeattlePI.com is a bit more sensible in that it has 20 hacks instead of the 150 it used to have. However it is watching its online readership fall to 1.4 million unique users in March from 1.84 million in February and 1.80 million in January. It is losing readers to a rival website operated by the other daily newspaper in town, The Seattle Times. The rival had 1.5 million unique users in February but saw its traffic increase to 2.2 million unique users in March, a gain of 70 percent over a year earlier. (We still better than both of them, with less hacks. sub.ed.)

Either way it is clear that traditional print media have not got the hang of online media yet and until they do it is going to be a very bleak time for them.