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Newspaper websites, can they be eliminated?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by 93Devil, Mar 16, 2012.

?

You are the publisher of a newspaper. What do you do?

  1. Keep everything the way it is. We have bottomed out, and we are comfortable here.

    7 vote(s)
    15.6%
  2. Shut down the website for good. Make people buy a paper, printed on paper, once again if they want t

    3 vote(s)
    6.7%
  3. Go to a paid subscription website right away.

    26 vote(s)
    57.8%
  4. Close the website for two weeks then reboot it as a pay site.

    9 vote(s)
    20.0%
  1. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    In my neck of the woods, I'm surprised the local telecommunication and media company hasn't been pushing its news operation more. It owns a cable company with its own local HD channel, with HD newscasts, a chain of small dailies and weeklies, but the website is horrible. There isn't much cross promotion between the TV and newspaper operations.

    If the company spent money on a good website, I'm sure it could leverage it into more revenue.
     
  2. TGO157

    TGO157 Active Member

    I once had it explained to me this way:

    there are endless Websites out there for a company to put its ad on, and the thus more options and mroe competition for a newspaper Website to compete for that ad. Therefore, the price to buy an online ad is very cheap and very tough for any individual Website to make a serious profit from.
     
  3. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    The key is you have to reach niches. Newspaper ad teams are conditioned to sell ads that reach a broad base and they sell ads for a specific product, as opposed to ads customized for specific user interest.

    Online advertising is a completely different animal.
     
  4. geddymurphy

    geddymurphy Member

    You should be.

    I'm not saying the local bloggers will have the same standards that we embrace as professional journalists. They may be loud-mouth wingnuts.

    Or in some cases, they may be pretty reasonable people who think, sometimes correctly, that the local paper is full of itself and shouldn't be so high-and-mighty when they're bringing 23-year-old kids who know nothing about the town to cover the City Council meetings. And then when you're charging while the other content is free -- oh geez.

    I've been tempted to do it myself in my suburban town. But we have Patch, so there's no need.

    We've got to get over ourselves, folks. Maybe you're the hottest thing in small local dailies. Bully for you. But a lot of people aren't. The fact that some J-school professor liked your anecdotal lede means jack-squat in the real world.

    The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have fantastic writers and fantastic journalists. (Obviously better than me, since I can't think of an adjective other than "fantastic.") They can get by with various forms of paywalls.

    And small papers, particularly weeklies, might not need to invest much in a website. Maybe just put a well-designed blog out there so you can put out something here and there during the week -- just enough to attract a small following and get people talking about your publication. And then on the rare occasion that you have some wild story that attracts attention outside your town -- maybe a mob of wild pigs that gets loose in a Little League game or something like that -- you can post it so that people can share it in the vast world outside your circulation area.

    And on that occasion, you'll be really glad you don't have a hard paywall. Or nothing.

    The online world is hard. It really is. But it's reality. Denying it doesn't solve the problem.
     
  5. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    Not to mention, website ads are generally cheaper than newspaper ads. The ad sales people don't get very big commisions if they sell web ads. They make their money selling the newspaper ads.

    Can't say I blame them for wanting to sell the ads that pay more. They have to put food on the table too.
     
  6. BrianGriffin

    BrianGriffin Active Member

    I'd almost say that if you are going to use a paywall, you have to add content that is specifically designed to go behind the paywall and would target an audience that is willing to pay.

    A lot of newspapers moving to paywalls don't do that.

    My experience with paywall sites as a user? I read the Times but if I'm up against my limit, I'm likely to say "see ya next month, Times."
     
  7. Frank_Ridgeway

    Frank_Ridgeway Well-Known Member

    What, do you think this is the first time I have seen someone argue the position you are taking?

    Even the local indy websites generally held up as the best (Minnesota and San Diego) ... vastly inferior to the newspapers -- not even close.

    My newspaper's website would suck, too, if the print staff were not providing it with tens of millions of dollars of content each year.

    No one else is going to spend that kind of money covering local news.
     
  8. geddymurphy

    geddymurphy Member

    Certainly not, though I'm not sure how many papers are spending tens of millions specifically on local news.

    But this is asymetrical warfare we're talking about. Someone can start an indy site on the music scene and chip away at your entertainment coverage. (That's been happening in print for decades already -- now the cost of entry is lower.) Someone can cover your local college sports. Someone can do something specifically on the City Council. It adds up.
     
  9. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    E-editions that replicate the look of print are only good if you need a tear sheet. It's not how readers want to consume content.
     
  10. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    Geddy, you're making some great points. I've enjoyed quite a few indy music sites, and know someone who left newspapers to start one and has gone national with it.

    But I agree with Frank that local bloggers -- even the best ones -- can't replace the thorough, reliably objective WATCHDOG function that local newspapers serve.

    Too many of the online people who relentlessly cover school boards, city councils, cop shops (and there are a few) have an agenda or ax to grind. And that makes their web site or blog less reliable than the local paper's reporting, despite the cutbacks and hire-the-cheapest-option status of newsrooms.
     
  11. geddymurphy

    geddymurphy Member

    Absolutely.

    Now if only we could convince people to spend money on what's most reliable ...
     
  12. gregcrews

    gregcrews Member

    Your website isn't just a tool to generate money, it's an advertisement for your product (the paper version).

    About a year ago a big wildfire started in the town where I was then working. The highway was shut down, homes were evacuated. It was a big deal. So big that the sports editor (me) had to go cover real news. We ran updates all day long on our website and the paper's facebook page went crazy with people passing along information and commenting on our updates and photos.

    The next day our single-copy sales went through the roof, as one might expect after a natural disaster. But in the following weeks and months our subscription numbers made a noticeable incline and our single-copy sales were stronger than expected. After relying on the newspaper to give them important information during the fire, people seemed to value the paper more.

    It wouldn't have been possible if we didn't have a website and a facebook page.

    All of those businesses that put ads in our papers have to spend money, time and effort to do so, but hopefully they see more business because of it. An online presence is the same thing for newspapers.

    I'm not sure if there is a good way for newspapers to make money online, and I'm certainly not saying that 100 percent of you content should be online for free, but I think if your paper doesn't have a website it is doing itself and its community a huge disservice.
     
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