Newspaper websites, can they be eliminated?

To be fair, some e-editions are a lot easier to read than others. I don't own stock in Olive Software, but Active Paper Daily covers the Tribune papers, Miami Herald, Kansas City Star, Detroit Free Press/News, and the Dallas and Fort Worth papers for starters. LOT easier to read those e-editions than say, ones provided by Tecnavia or Newspaper Direct.

 

Maybe if the advertising department sold Internet ads, there wouldn't be an issue.

Or is that just too hard?

 

Uh... ever check out the newsstands on Apple or Amazon? I subscribe to two papers on the Kindle Fire I'm on now.

Perhaps I hold this opinion because I'm a young guy, but the idea that newspapers can do away with their websites is laughable to me. There is a certain segment (people under 30) that is not going to subscribe to any newspaper, because frankly, they can find news elsewhere for free. They're not going to pay for content they've gotten for free, and they're sure as hell not going to pay for a subscription to a website.

The only pay system that works IMO is the "premium content" option. Keep most material free, but try and entice subscribers with the premium content.

Or you can do away with your website. See where that gets you when 60% of you subscriber base is dead in 20 years.

 

Question for you: If you couldn't access a newspaper site for it without paying, where would you get local news, like city council stuff or local business or crime stuff? Is any of that even pertinent to you? If not, what local content is?

 

The right answer involves doing more with the website and reconciling being an entity that's looking for the best ways to handle news across various platforms. Newspapers aren't a single platform any more. If they try to be that, they will fail.

 

Well, in my area, I can watch the City Council live and repeated on local public access, and local crime or business stories (as well as any important news from City Council) on any of the four local TV stations that have bureaus in my town.

 

Depends on the local market. My paper can't shut it down or charge. Different market, different answer. I'd eagerly go pay-only in many, many places, though, so that's how I voted. I'll put it this way: If I win the Mega tonight, I will start a publishing venture (not a newspaper) and I will give nothing to non-subscribers. As the guy says in Goodfellas, "Fuck you, pay me."

 

In a big town, a neighboring paper or a TV station would put the stuff up for free and take the pay-paper's audience.

In a small town, some enterprising person or group of people would start a blog and take the pay-paper's audience.

Even small towns have little weekly infotainment publications that could very easily expand into city council coverage.

Not saying it's impossible for local papers to come up with something that might attract subscribers. But let's not kid ourselves into thinking that "No pay, no city council coverage" is going to make people pay up.

 

I have many fears about the newspaper biz, but this is not among them.

I am afraid that more people are going to become oblivious to local news, yes. I know plenty of people who could not name the mayor of their town.

I am not at all worried that people who do give a shit are going to find satisfactory coverage elsewhere.

 

I work at a chain of small weekly papers with a couple of sister papers that are daily. We have a website. It sucks a fat d**k.

We simply do not have the staff to put ANY effort into it and every time we get used to our reduced numbers and find a way to put a decent product out, they gut us again.

So, my vote is, f**k the website.

If someone has a problem with our site not having fresh content, for free, I tell them they're more than welcome to go to the newsstands and pick up a copy of our paper.

Heck, a couple weeks ago we had a hot breaking news story before any other media outlet. It involved a controversial new state fire academy. I got repeated phone calls from firefighters around the state asking when the story would be online, when it would be online, when it would be online. I intentionally held it off the site for a week, told them all to pick up a copy of newsstands and, when I checked our single copy sales, they were noticeably higher.

Sorry folks, we run a business. And until someone can figure out how to make revenue off our website, I will not make it a priority to cut the throat of our paper product.