Cutting off access to aggregators - Mark feels that this somehow makes the content more valuable and convince readers to come directly to the site. Bullshit. If a site blocks access to a particular news story for an aggregator, the aggregator will simply link to another site that has another article on that same news story (Breaking news? more like leaking news. It takes a grand total of about 2 min for someone else to write up the same story).
The whole point of staying on top of aggregators is that when readers follow a link from an aggregator, they will stick around and go deeper into the site - thats where money can be made. Instead, if they let the aggregators link to other sites, they just took another giant leap towards extinction.
John Gruber said it best - the way for newspapers to make money is to cut the bloat. As opposed to the current model where the editorial staff makes up only a fraction of the total head count at major newspaper and magazine companies, they should become lean and mean organizations with little or no management bureaucracy. Operations where nearly every employee is working on producing actual content. Gruber cites the example of Talking Points Memo (which is profitable and hiring) and I wholeheartedly agree.
Welcome the aggregators to link to you. Keep your organisation wire tight. Those are the first 2 steps newspapers should be taking.
P.S. Reuters has the right idea - http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2009/08/04/why-i-believe-...