No BLOGS! No website, either

Owner of a Boston weekly without a Web presence discusses his print-first philosophy.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/02/the-boston-courant-proud-not-to-have-a-website-until-the-owner-sees-a-profitable-end-game/

 

That's a damn smart dude. I think every editor and publisher in America would like a reset button to the time when they could choose whether to chase those theoretical Web dollars.

 

Is it just me or is this what every publication with local news should do? Why does nearly every newspaper seem to give away its content for free? Nobody's ever been able to explain that to me.

 

Because newspaper execs are sheep?

 

I don't understand it either. It's one thing if you're a local news outlet owned by a national chain, or a group that's large enough regionally to do things like ad packages and what not. But if you're the only outlet for a town of less than 20,000, then I don't see any advantage to giving things out online.

 

So we take the guy's word for it that his newspaper is super successful and profitable?

 

Online isn't the only reason newspapers are having problems. The decline in ad revenue isn't solely through the loss of paid circulation. News habits have changed. People really don't care much to pay for a paper to get all of their news when they have cable news, plus plenty of free national news online. If you live near a market with a network TV affiliate, you can get local news online.

 

What an idiot. Doesn't this guy know that not only does he need a web presence, his company also needs to take on way more debt than it can handle?

 

except he's giving away the content for free anyway

 

But he's giving it away in a way that allows him to command a premium from advertisers who want to reach his specific audience.

You can't control your web audience with the same geographic limitations that would allow you to command anything near a comparable premium for online advertising.

 

The Courant is a unique situation with an ultra-affluent audience in some ultra-affluent zip codes. They don't NEED the Web, because it doesn't matter if Jimmy in Jamaica Plain is reading the paper online. The hits don't matter to the paper or its advertisers.

I think it would be wrong to see this as a model for the rest of the industry.

 

The problem isn't you giving away your product online, it's the other guy giving the same information online. If that's inevitable, you better point the readers toward your version of that information and monetize it.

As has been said, this might work in a specific instance where somebody has information so unique that nobody else is going to have it. Generally, that probably means not many people care.