TIME's solution: start charging

That's part of what is suggested here:

http://www.sportsjournalists.com/forum/threads/67665/

 

On one of the other threads on this, I brought up the idea of the various newspaper owners getting together and coming to some sort of an agreement on how to charge for online content.

Someone suggested that it violates all sorts of antitrust laws.

BFD. Pay the fines.

Without these online subscriptions, newspapers can't record readers. And without some sort of accurate count of readers, advertisers won't trust the numbers and won't pay the appropriate rates. I would almost guarantee that newspapers could double their ad revenues in a year if some sort of universal subscription service was in place. Because despite what you've heard, people are reading newspapers in record numbers.

The idea that they won't pay the subscriptions is insane. Where you gonna find out what happened at the city council meeting? Or at the high school football game? Or at the other 25 events we cover that you can't get elsewhere? Who's gonna hold your politicians accountable? Who's gonna make sure college administrators aren't skimming money? Who's gonna tell you what's really going on with your college football/basketball teams? You ain't gettin' any of that shit from the TV guys or Little Billy's Blog.

The bottom line is this: We have a valuable product that people want and are willing to pay for ... and we're GIVING it to them for nothing.

And we're wondering why we're going broke.

If you wanna get this done, do this: Let AP announce that beginning April 1 its rates will double for any paper lacking an online subscription charge of at least $10 per month. That way, the newspaper owners are motivated to do it and they have a fall guy to blame it on.

 

We have common sense. Publishers are a bunch of stupid, rich fucks with NO CLUE.

 

Why do you think we can't track readers? With Any program , even Google Analytics, it is easy. You don't need subscriptions to count. I can tell you 100 times more about or online readers than our subscription readers. the first time my boss saw our report, he said it was too much to process it was so much information.

The problem is advertisers and our sales people don't understand it.

 

Ok read this story, great. Assuming people are going to want to purchase something that they used to get for free? Not at $160 per year. Perhaps $20 per year, or 10 cents a day. That may work, but is it enough to turn a profit.

The problem is with declining news staff you are losing content. Is there enough local and exclusive content to draw someone in daily for a script? I would say no. This would require a tremendous expenditure in staff, which I am for, but not sure it can support.

Time can do. Run of the mill 40,000 circ? No way.

Another problem, when you deliver a paper, it becomes routine. Some people purchase it and just skim it. On the web, you are going there to look for something specific.

This idea of charging is negating how the younger population, that is now in its 30, consumes news. They look at it because it's free, not because it's news. How do you charge for news on PDA's such as the iphone? How about those aggragators and RSS feeds like google reader etc. That's the way news is going. The laptop computer is so 2000.

This could be even worse than giving it away. We run the risk of some people realizing they might not just need us after all.

BTW, I am not paying a nickel for just local news on the web. I will get my free weekly that is mailed to my home. That does the job fine.

 

You're right. They don't understand it, and that's a problem. But at the same time, the advertisers do have a good argument -- that there's no way to guarantee them that the numbers are real.

At the same time, we know they trust the subscription numbers, no matter how flawed they might be. Why? Because they know how that translates for them. They know that even if a newspaper tinkers with their circ. numbers, the advertisers can still count on a certain level of impact from each circulation section.

The stupid thing is WE KNOW THIS. At most places, despite this "move to the web," the printed product still accounts for 85 percent of the revenue. Even with circulation numbers dropping like a rock and online numbers growing every single day, the revenue percentages aren't changing much. And the reason for that is that we haven't come up with a way to guarantee the numbers and advertisers don't trust them.

There's a simple solution: Give them the system they've always trusted.

 

Why is Rivals.com able to get people to pay for content? Because it's a niche product as opposed to general interest?

 

Yep.

 

Hmmmmm ... so the winning formula is to give people something specific that they don't feel they can live without.

 

Yes. And "things that happen within 50 miles of you" isn't it