AZ Republic going behind paywall

OK, just spent a week in the Phoenix area ... and the Republic is still a strong newspaper. A ton of good writing in there, sports and news.

Great A1 news features on new people mover at the airport, man released from prison after 40 years on a shaky arson charge (I think "60 Minutes" had this, too), small town of Bisbee daring to recognize civil unions of gay couples in ultra conservative Arizona ...

One quibble: the sports section doesn't have the words "Arizona Republic" on it, in bylines, flags, folios, photo credits. It's all "azcentralsports," even though "The Republic" is used in the rest of the paper. And no late sports results whatsoever, including home Diamondbacks games that end by 9:30.

Also, from all anecdotal evidence I could gather from my family members and parents' neighbors, the increased print subscription price to cover e-edition and internet access went over like we thought. (It doesn't take much prompting; "You work for a newspaper? Oh, let me tell you about those jerks at the Republic"). Many of the mostly 60-and-older people I talk to either reduced or canceled their subscription after the price went up.

 

Always thought the Republic was a pretty good paper, even under the Gannett fold. As for Azcentral sports, ehh... I can take it. It's kind of like Game Time HS in the Dallas Morning News when the rest of the section is SportsDay.

 

i've yet to make a second click on a regional television website.
i don't get my weather, sports or hard news from a television website, ever. every now and then one will come up with an abstract story ... that's it. that's pretty much all they're good for.
that is all.

 

I get that, and if I'm looking for a story in another city I'll go to the newspaper site before I'll go to a TV site. There's a pretty huge range in quality in the TV sites.

I can tell you, though, that our web numbers went way up after the Republic put up the paywall. I don't know how much it hurt the Republic's numbers, but it great for us.

 

a. I'll guess your numbers were nowhere near the Republic's numbers before the paywall went in.

b. The Republic probably made much more off the digital subscription revenue than 0.005 cent banner ads.

 

a. Absolutely correct.

b. I have no way of knowing how this is working out for the paper. Remember, the "digital subscription" doubled as a significant rate increase for existing subscribers. The subscription cost may well offset the loss of traffic and the drop in subscribers. I don't know.

 

It's like when JRC says digital ad revenue tripled in a year -- well, tripling some inconsequential fraction of your total revenues isn't necessarily difficult.