Putting articles just in print at first

How so?

Our advertisers have a presence on the website, but it pales to the ads in our paper.
Web ads don't make enough revenue to sustain a staff to provide copy - at least not here. Our advertsiing bread and butter is the print edition.

If I am a subscriber - or a non-subscriber - who can get practically everything for free on the web, what is my incentive to subscribe to the paper?

 

People are migrating to the web from print and they are not going back. That's the cold, hard truth.

People who look at your site online are your customers too. And if they don't already, they are not going to buy the print version.

So looking at them as some kind of moochers or freeloaders or something really isn't very productive.

 

But it is the truth.

And I'll argue they aren't customers. Customers pay for things. Advertisers and subscribers are customers.

I won't say people who rely on our site to provide (free) news content are freeloaders. They are taking advantage of what is being offered (i.e. given away). I am a firm believer we should not give away our product.

 

I should stick to the promise I made to myself to stay off this thread. But ...

Migrating? Yes. Not coming back? Yes.

But a lot of years ago, and for years since, newspapers did nothing to try to stop or slow the migration -- and in fact, they damn well encouraged it.

And that was magnificently stupid business.

I have a lot more to say, but I need to get back to putting together our next issue of dead sports section walking.

 

I'm sorry, J_D, to bust your illusion that your were working for a bunch of business-type geniuses.

 

The root problem of the print journalism field is it was such a slam-dunk business model for so long, you didn't really need people in the business who understood business.

When the model was no longer a slam dunk, they didn't know how to behave like entrepreneurs. So some paper companies brought in business people who didn't understand newspapers and it just got worse.

We see the lack of business sense on this thread. We are clueless as to how to best monetize ourselves.

I'll throw my two cents in: I think it's not a bad idea, but the devil's in the details. What is launched print first and why? Special sections are a GREAT place to launch print-first. However, I would seriously caution against print only.

 

Ace, I sorta had a hunch all along.

 

If you go print only, you risk being seen as behind-the-times by both readers and advertisers. Readers aren't suddenly going to flock back to print.

 

I'm not a print-only guy, but I know I'm in the minority -- at least in the groups in which I've had the discussion -- on my approach and philosophy of having some web-only, some print-only, and cross-promoting.

But I don't pretend what can work for one paper necessarily works for all papers, something I think we can all agree upon.

 

I disagree to some extent. Special sections that are read like magazines are great for print-first. Think of your football section. If it's like ours, it's picked up in August and sits around homes probably until spring cleaning when they realize they don't need it any more. One should strongly encourage that behavior. If they look through what they want online, they'll be less likely to go pick up a copy.

Of course, I can think of at least one former shop that went so far out of its way to make its print product completely irrelevant to its readers, you would be right in speaking to their specific case.

 

Brian, he said print-only. You're saying print-first. Two different things, no?

 

Absolutely, print-only is probably never a good thing, in my humble opinion. Your work should ultimately become accessible through whatever the mainstream way of accessing information may be.

EDIT: Well, I should never say never. I'm sure there are some cases where print-only would work. I can't think of any off hand.