Why won't this work?

Profitable for whom? It'll be profitable for the owners, I'm sure.

But take a long look at the Seattle P-I model: 20 percent of the staff, significantly lower pay than we are used to in what is already the lowest-paid industry among college grads.

That's what we have to look forward to in the web-based business model.

 

Who else would need to profit? And what makes you so sure subscription newspapers (beyond national publications and major metros) will be profitable? I'm not ready to suggest that even if they invest heavily in their products it will produce sufficient online demand.

Ultimately, that not going to be a successful model, either. The P-I, like a lot of newspapers, is essentially paying for the death of one product (consider the lost investment in plant, machinery, distribution network, etc.) while trying to cheaply launch another.

Publishers who are losing money like this -- and there are many -- are the biggest hindrance to the online success of local news media because they are unwilling or unable to invest enough to make the online product compelling.

 

Does anyone else think that online ads don't make money because of who is advertising?

I mean, sure, I'm not going to click on "LOSE WEIGHT IN FOUR DAYS OR LESS!" or anything having to do with Geneology or whatnot. But would I be more tempted to click on something that advertised clothing or food or something you'd see in a newspaper or magazine? Yeah, probably.

I think that's the first issue. Ads aren't profitable online because they're all for junk and/or scams nobody wants or needs.

 

So you're not interested in my miracle system to remove hair from combs?

 

Each article should cost 25 cents to read. 10 cents if you must. Make it easy for the person to be charged for the story. If an article in a big city gets 50,000 hits you do the math. Story after story means some money.

 

Do you have an idea for how to do this? Dozens of companies have failed trying more or less since the internet began. Micropayment is a big problem on the web.

 

How many stories do you see each day that you would pay a quarter to read? For me, it might be a handful across a dozen or so major metros that I read on a daily basis. Probably NONE in my local rag, although Peter Abraham's blog is usually a pretty good read.

The Web isn't just a new distribution system; it's also a new competition system. I've got a vast array of content from which to choose -- not even just news content -- from around the world.

No one is captive to one or two newspapers anymore, which is the reason for the hyper-local movement. But hyper-local isn't enough. Hyper-local also has to be done well and in-depth if you want me to pay to read.

That means quality journalists given quality resources, two things that have been in shorter and shorter supply on the local news level for the past two decades as publishers continuously diluted their products.

 

Part of the problem in monetizing Internet ads is not knowing who is reading. You can talk about page views and site visits all you want, but until you have a mechanism that tells advertisers the demographics looking at what content when, you'll be limited. I believe Nielsen is developing (or has something) like that now. They're trying to sell it to our trade pub, but it's expensive -- more than all but a few publications are going to pay now. Presumably with that information you can start selling for more because now you're assuring the advertiser it's going to get who it wants.

 

Zebra has a good point here. I mean, who responds to those lame-ass "TAKE THIS SURVEY AND WIN ..." pop-up ads?

Other problem, IMHO, is that for a long time, ad reps tried to bribe print advertisers to put basically the same ad on the newspaper's web sites. That's stupid because, really, they're two completely different groups of readers.

The best online ads target people who used to live in a certain area or are planning to visit there -- you know, ads for real estate, travel deals, tourist stuff.

Print ads can, and should, cater to people that actually live in the newspaper's community and need day to day things like groceries, hardware, adult books and videos, etc.

 

I would imagine those advertisers would much rather advertise on the city's tourism site.

 

I disagree. Our SE also runs a small community museum downtown. The bulk of his visitors who knew of the place ahead of time discovered it through the visitors bureau, but he estimated about 35 percent said they first heard of it from an ad on our rag's Web site.

 

My hunch why on micropayment models won't work: Consumers are now accustomed to paying a flat rate for services -- ISPs, for example. Long gone are the days when you had X number of hours per month and you had to keep track of your time so you didn't go over. I know I was agitated about the online clock a decade ago and was pleased when the flat-rate, unlimited plan came into being.