Newspaper websites, can they be eliminated?

I've long said my six-a-week daily should go twice weekly plus online subscription. Make the print stuff free and charge for website premium.

Problem is a lot would have to change, it's drastic and the higher-ups don't have the balls to do it.

 

I still think you have to do some form of print. Inserts and coupons do mean something financially and the Sunday paper still has some juice.

The format of the Sunday and Wednesday papers might change from "breaking" news to more of a week that was type of roundup with some breaking events that occured on Saturday.

 

Why would you close it down before making people pay? And why 2 weeks?

 

Though it's sad to see it happen to a lot of dailys, I do see papers with print editions on only Sunday, Wednesday and maybe another weekday being a viable model going forward. I'd like to see them be sort of "digest" versions with longer, more indepth coverage, with the breaking stuff on the web.

 

You can't shut a website down and reboot. There's just enough advertising revenue generated to not make that option viable. Of course, there's not nearly enough ad revenue to keep a traditional newspaper operation going either.

 

Well, and beyond that, it's just not necessary. I'm guessing people who do that kind of shit can launch the paywall in about 5 minutes once it's developed.

 

If it was a quick transfer, I would at least let people know for weeks in advance about the transfer and have the new paysite look nothing like the old free one.

To me, closing it down at least for one day, would make people realize how much it sucks not knowing all the local things they are missing.

 

Yeah. That's it. Take away your product so you can prove a point that may or may not resonate with the audience. Savvy.

 

Disney does it and so does McDonalds.

 

That's right. I forgot newspapers are in the same economic class as Disney and McDonalds. My bad. Great idea!

 

As a group, they used to be and probably still are.

 

Oy.