Newspaper websites, can they be eliminated?

And it is the newspaper ad people who made those ads so cheap by devaluing them from the start ... hell, most of them just gave it away as an add-on to a print ad.

 

Moral of the story: Start a fire in your town to boost sales.

 

I wonder what would happen if newspapers made prep sports exclusive either in print or on the web. Make people pay for prep sports by subscribing, or have parents and coaches become accustomed to reading stories online and would pay for them. I would think if prep sports were solely online, people would just copy and paste them on to their own sites or facebook or in e-mails.

 

You'd need to be ready to hear a lot of "Hey, my son is getting recruited by Farstate State! We need tons of stories about him online so they can read them!" complaints.

Granted, you may never be able to please those parents, anyway. And some prep stuff certainly could be subscription-worthy, akin to ESPN's "Insider" content.

 

Does anyone know what the percentage is of, say, the overall ESPN online-content readers who are ESPN Insider subscribers?

Because my fear with most newspaper paywalls is that, well, readers won't care at all -- that there is almost nothing that people would pay for online anymore, and if we try to make them do it, they will, as another poster, just move on, or simply do without, and just get used to that.

This is not because there isn't anything worthy of being paid for. As we've contended, all of our work has value (to us, anyway), but I think there is a real disconnect for most people these days. They are unaware, unknowing, uninformed, and, for the most part, uncaring about that.

I don't know if ignorance really is bliss, but I doubt people will pay much, if anything, for anything we can offer anymore. The apathy and self-centeredness is just too strong and too rampant.

I can absolutely believe that most people in many cities in this country could not name their mayor, let alone any other higher-up politician representing them. If something doesn't impact people directly and immediately, to an extent that they can really see and/or feel, such as in the case of nearby natural disasters or national emergencies, then, as a rule, people tend to be overwhelmingly blase about it.

It's the state of affairs. People just don't truly care, about much of anything.

 

The underlying problem here goes beyond our industry's inability to turn the web into a revenue stream. Don't get me wrong -- I agree that's a huge problem. But there's something causing that, especially for smaller/community papers:

Most people don't give a rat's ass about local news.

Yeah, I know that can't be a blanket statement. I've read (and contributed many times) to the Dear Dimwit on the Phone thread. I know all about it. But I think it's easy for us to get fooled into thinking that the small, vocal minority speaks for the broader population. It doesn't. Read this and weep:

http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/role_newspapers

Seriously. Read. Weep. Because right there is the death of our industry. To wit:

On the surface, most people do not feel that their local newspaper is a key source that they rely on for local information. For instance, when asked, “If your local newspaper no longer existed, would that have a major impact, a minor impact, or no impact on your ability to keep up with information and news about your local community?” a large majority of Americans, 69%, believe the death of their local newspaper would have no impact (39%) or only a minor impact (30%) on their ability to get local information.

Younger adults, age 18-29, were especially unconcerned. Fully 75% say their ability to get local information would not be affected in a major way by the absence of their local paper. The same was true of heavier technology users: 74% of home broadband users say losing their paper would have no impact or only a minor impact on their ability to get local information.

Yeah, I know, it goes on to say that when people do go looking for local news, the newspaper is where they turn. But how many people are actually looking for that news? When it comes to that, I'm part of the problem. I admit it. There's a good, award-winning local weekly (and no local daily) that covers the town where I live, and it has real news in it. But in most weeks I don't read it, and I work in the business. I don't follow what my county council does, or the local school board.

I should care. But I don't. And that's the problem.

Where I work -- which is a community chain -- we recently took a look at the web traffic. It was dismal ... maybe 300-400 page views per story on average. Many stories were less than that. A lot of that may be due to the market. Plenty of population, but lots of transplants, so people aren't attached to the community. So they don't read. And there is no solution for that.

So, we can debate the strategies -- how to package things in print vs. online in order to maximize the readership. But it's all rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic isn't it? Nobody really has any answers.

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with the guy who was running the website at a paper I worked for in the late 1990s, right when lots of local/community papers started going online. In the newsroom, we were all concerned that we started giving our product away for free. Why were we doing that? And he kept telling me: "We have to be on the web ... we have to be on the web ... that's where the industry is going." He had no idea why. Or how it would work. We just followed like lemmings.

Little did I know I was hearing the demise of the industry in that conversation. Sorry to be such a downer, but that's the way I see it.

And now, on to the "Getting out of the business" thread.

 

There are about 120,000 people in a county close to me. There are 24,000 students in this county, so there is a pretty big base that are interested in schools. Most of these people are taxed. A lot of them are concerned about crime in their area. Almost everyone wants to know who died. A portion also wants to know how the kid down the street did in the basketball game. Another number wants to chuckle at the funnies.

The older you are, the more interested you are in the local news because it effects you more.

There will always be a demand for local, accurate, news. It's just how much to charge and the way to deliver the information are the stumbling blocks.

 

I guess it depends where you are. We have an almost daily selection of especially bizarre violent crimes (that I believe we could and should do more with). We have really high property and income taxes and a lot of bitching about it. We have state, county and municipal governments that at least are perceived by locals as being extremely corrupt, and the politicians are especially nasty to each other. We have pro, major- and mid-major college sports and high school sports that are nationally prominent in at least a few areas. We have a better-than-average entertainment scene and a world-class one in the next state. We have some serious environmental concerns. A fair amount of internationally significant news related to medicine. A lot of land-use and eminent domain issues. High unemployment and pretty much weekly news about downsizing locally. A lot of transportation stories that affect many residents' daily lives. A fair amount of famous rich people who live and die here.

We also have a lot of morons who care about none of the above. There is no website that covers any of those topics better than we do, though. So it's not like they are leaving us for somewhere else, they are just leaving.

 

This is my town too. High crime. Controversial issues surrounding development and growth management (if and where to build a new traffic loop, public schools breaking away to form independent school districts, etc.). Historically corrupt government.

The list goes on and on. Local news here is anything but boring. BUT a newspaper can make it boring by making the news a recount of what happened at the Tuesday drainage board meeting.

 

I would never even consider getting rid of the website. If anything, I'd put up a paywall. People will huff and puff about it, but they'll pay, especially in small to medium communities. But it's my opinion, if done right, the online can be more precious than the print, without question.

Again, it's relative to the respective community. I'm talking in a broad perspective. But newspapers who are not putting money and resources into their website are on the fast track to nowhere, IMO.