Not so many years ago, newspaper executives were saying they needed to put all of their stories online, even though they were charging people to read the same stories in a printed newspaper.

Now, MediaNews Group executives Dean Singleton (right) and Jody Lodovic (left) are having second thoughts.

“… we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free,” they said in a memo posted at Romenesko.

The memo outlines the company’s online plans:

• “We will begin to move away from putting all of our newspaper content online for free. Instead, we will explore a variety of premium offerings that apply real value to our print content. We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don’t buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay.” • MediaNews will create a regional site that will be “actively managed to present breaking news. It will continue to draw a content from the newspaper (but probably in a more abbreviated form), but will also have user-generated content, community involvement and third party content.” • “We will build a new local utility site (Local.com), which is an ecosystem of local information, resources, user content, shopping guides, and marketplaces. This site will be focused on a younger audience as well as other targeted audiences based on demographics which are attractive to our current and potential advertisers.”

Here’s a link to the comments Romenesko got about the memo.