Opinions about online newspaper access fees

Our 13K went behind the paywall in May. Reader feedback has not been kind. Here's a small sample from our paper's Facebook page. Misspellings are by the readers, not me, and the paper's name has been changed just in case a higher-up reads this (never mind that I'm posting as myself):

And another...

The annoying thing? Our online subscription is CHEAPER than the print subscription. Several people have commented that we "shouldn't be charging for news," as if we haven't charged at the newsstand for the last 120 years. If you pick up a copy at the gas station, read through it for 30 minutes and put it back on the rack you'd get the cops called on you. I guess the whole "it's been free all along!" mindset is tough to break, especially when your competitors' online editions are still free.
As far as I know, though, we have no plans to go back to a free online edition. I think we're hoping to weather the storm and hope people come to accept it. Might be all you can do.

 

Some of these people shouldn't pay to read the news. They should enroll in a remedial English class at the local community college.

 

Great post. But being a "consultant" is a helluva way to make a living. The crap those people spew out of their mouths. Wow.

 

In my opionion, they should charge the hell out of the online access, and make the paper version dirt cheap. In other words, make people pay extra for the convenience of having a 24/7 intravenous line to the news. Make the online readers subsidize the writers who are busting ass to blog and re-file the same story 100 times. That way, online readers aren't just buying news, they're buying all that extra fluff and workers' overtime. As it should be.

 

It's a good idea for the papers to charge users.
That's the name of the game now, in this new era of journalism.

 

There's a couple of papers around here that just went pay on the web. Two others did about two years ago. All of them forgot one thing: An option for people who are looking for one article.

The two that went pay first charge only $5 a month, so a person could probably eat that if they were looking for one story and wanted to read it badly enough.

The other two charge the same rate for a term of online access as they do for the same term of the print edition. There go the $5 one-timers (they aren't going to want a 3-month term) and maybe a lot of other people who, if they thought the paper was worth $90 a year would have been taking the print edition in the first place.

 

My shop does put things behind a paywall. IT DOES NOT WORK. Flat out has failed immensely. All we have done is drive away readers, hurt our reputation, and forced people to find their news elsewhere online. It's been a disaster.

We have had a small number of subscriptions from online but nothing that is going to save the paper. We charge the same as we do for the print product, and it has not been well-received. Some may say we stopped losing a ton of circulation because of it, but I think circulation has bottomed out anyway (people who buy the paper now, will always buy the paper if they can afford it).

The problem that has come across is people online only want 1 or 2 articles online. They don't want to pay $200 a year online for only one article a day at most.

So, they don't pay for the paper, and we are losing them as customers. What good does that do? The problem we are having is that it's easy to pluck down $.75 at the store for a newspaper that is packed with information. Chances are you are going to take 15 minutes to read it and may be interested in news that you didn't look for. Don't underestimate the fact people like reading news briefs and the AP packaged in a way that is customized locally. People can do one-stop shopping with a newspaper when you include local, regional and national and world news. The daily newspaper makes sense.

But, online you are usually looking for one article, and specific articles only. People aren't going to fill out credit card info everyday for one article, or pay $200 a year for perhaps one article on a site that isn't updated continuously.

The worst part is it's hurting the reputation and the reach of the paper. We have essentially closed off our access on the assumption that what we have what no one else has (local news, local sports). The problem is there are weeklies around here that aren't as good, but are free. Also, what do you do if there is a patch.com local website coming to your circulation area? That site is going to dominate the news -- ESPECIALLY if they hire away your reporter that covers that town.

We can all say "we should charge for access", but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. The only way a pay model would work is if you invested heavily in updating the site continuously, added content that is in addition to the paper, and delivered a comprehensive news package to the reader.

That's not happening.

 

You say we're losing customer by charging online. That's false. They weren't customers to begin with. What you're losing is freeloaders.

We went to a paywall in May. Charge more for online than print. Our reasoning: the online is updated continuously and it's not subsidized by advertising like the print product, which is only twice a week. We also aren't limited with space in the online product, so we actually deliver more news.

We only have a few online subscribers, but our print circulation has stabilized. Yes, we had the initial backlash from those who were used to reading it for free. Eventually that storm will blow over.

 

A good website updates constantly, with the regular visitors seeing updates throughout the day. I've seen several behind paywalls that treat the Web as just a place to put stories and offer nothing else. Not going to work.

Chargng, though, does nothing to change the fact that people can get news from a ton of different sources now. Or they might not care to get the paper because satellite or cable gives them everything they think they want.

 

Valid points. But just because others create competitors to your print product doesn't mean you should create your own. Again it comes down to value and cost. You have to have content that is valued, and the market will dictate the price. You're not going to get away with having the same thing as all the other news outlets and trying to charge for it.

 

Remember, too, that the price must exceed the cost. So it's Value > Price > Cost.

That's pretty hard to pull off in today's environment. Unless your content gatherers are working for free or damn near.

As a consumer, I would think you could generate some revenues by making electronic-only access available to out-of-towners who still give a damn about their hometown market or whatever. But you always risk turning off potential site visitors (even freeloaders might count to the ad folks) when they hit a paywall.

You also really can alienate people when you use social media -- Twitter, for instance -- to offer links, only to lure them to a two-graf taste and a demand for payment for the rest of the story.

Me, I might pay for online access to one or two papers but they'd be the big boys: WSJ, NYT, WaPo. Podunk or even Podunkopolis? Nah. If what those places crank out, with their Triple-A or lower minor leaguers, I either can find elsewhere or can survive without. (BTW, I lump myself in there with the Triple-A or lower voices who better stay free.)

 

It is hard to pull off the cost side of the equation.

However, I'd almost think the smaller the market, the fewer competitors, the more value to regular, everyday news.