LA Times going to paywall

Print subscribers get online access for free, though. Could it be they are trying to get more eyeballs on the print product? My company gives print subscribers an option of adding he online access at a discounted rate. So, our monthly online rate for those without a print subscription is $7.95 and print subscribers can add for $1.95 per month. I like the LAT model for print subscribers. Don't add cost to those loyal and who appreciate your product.

 

it looks precisely like eyeballs for sunday print is the point -- that's the 1.95 rate, WITH the sunday paper. but damned if i can figure out if they mean 1.95 gets me the paper too, or if i have to subscribe to sunday for the 1.95 price.

 

Some people on this board have some weird ideas about how to do things online, but this is by far the weirdest.

 

I'm just tired of telling an interview subject when a story will appear in the paper only to get the response of "Oh, that's okay, I'll just find it on the web."

And yes, but you'll only find the first three paragraphs on the site, so if you'd like the whole story it will be in Saturday's edition.

 

this whole paywall trend makes sense from the paper's perspective but i can't really think of more than one or two sites that i would actually pay for. i'm 39 years old. i remember when the internet didn't exist. back then and i couldn't read the LA Times, po-dunk times, etc., etc., etc., for free. you had to go to the artsy borders or barnes & noble and buy the sunday LA Times on Tuesday if for some reason you really wanted to read the LA Times. if you charge me i won't be reading you. and i won't miss it. at all.

 

and if you aren't paying to read us we won't miss you at all either. Enjoy getting your news off Facebook posts and Twitter bites.

 

You should be missing them, because more and more people don't care what's in the local rag. Who wants to pay for grip-and-grins?

 

These latest rumblings about paywalls by the Tribune and Gannett papers make me suspect that ad revenue from free web sites has either plateaued or is falling.

In the pre-Internet days, the debate over raising the price of the print version (say, from 35 to 50 cents) usually centered on weighing the increase in pocket change from individual buyers versus the loss of newsstand circulation and how that would impact ad rates.

So if paywalls are being proposed by the LA Times and other papers, makes me think management is trying to squeeze a few more pennies out of a product (all online content for free) that advertisers aren't flocking to anymore. If they ever did.

 

I thought I read online advertising was going to surpass print in 2012, but I can't find where I read it. I did find this, which shows print ahead, but the numbers are close. http://www.rbr.com/media-news/advertising/global-ad-spend-to-be-up-4-9-this-year.html

Point is, advertising online is there. Newspapers screwed themselves years ago by making online ads worthless to their clients by giving low, low, low, low rates or just throwing it in for free when they got a print ad.

Paywalls, IMO, is all about trying to increase the subscription rate (and thus the ad rate) while not caring about the future (it ain't print, sorry) or being a global provider instead of a local one.

 

Lantaur: I don't disagree with your point about online ads (as we all know, ANY numbers about newspaper ad revenue, whether print or online, are sketchy). I think ad revenue for online is not what newspaper companies hoped, but it has to be trending better than the print advertising, which is absolutely in the toilet.

However, I'm confused about the above statement. Aren't online ad rates set by number of clicks, or number of unique visitors a web site receives, more than by "paid subscribers"?

Or does it work like print, where subscriptions are much more highly valued than single-copy sales.

 

Sorry to confuse, I meant increase the *print* subscription rate in that above statement.