Guest post by Valerie Merahn Simon, senior vice president at BurrellesLuce.

There’s been a lot of debate lately about free versus paid content online. All this talk leads to one simple question. What features will motivate readers to scale the paywall?

Back in college I found myself at the campus store with less than a dollar in change in my pocket. To the left of the cashier was the New York Times. To the right was an assortment of gum and candy. As much as I wanted a pack of gum, the decision was a no-brainer. I paid for my New York Times and headed back to my dorm, reading as I walked.

Fast forward to January 2011 when the New York Times will roll out a new metered model that charges users after they exceed a set number of articles per month. Faced with the prospect of losing Stuart Elliott David Carr, Cathy Horn, or other favorite columnists, what will I do? Will I reach back into my wallet? Will you? Continue Reading »

Throughout my career, I’ve had opportunity to work on some pretty big crisis. My stance has always been, if a crisis develops from a PR perspective, someone should get fired (think Tiger Woods). Either the PR firm for not counseling correctly or the client for not listening. And you’d be surprised how often the client doesn’t listen. Continue Reading »

Dan Abrams, the former general manager of MSNBC, is launching a media-strategy firm, according to today’s Wall Street Journal.  His advantage is using a panel of journalists if your company faces a difficult public relations isssue to “weigh in on how media outlets would likely respond to different PR strategies.”

One of Abrams’s investors believes “big companies will be attracted to its ‘expert network’ and it’s pay-per-use model.”

Isn’t this a conflict of interest?  Since when do journalists moonlight as business consultants?  Isn’t our industry trying to stay away from this type of model, citing ethics?

What do you think?