Globe to make you pay for boston.com
The Herald reports.
I wonder if that means they'll get rid of some of the ads (here's looking at you, tag.contextweb.com) that often slow down page loading?
Oh, yeah, the Times confirms the paper is for sale.
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Good luck with that. I
Good luck with that.
I hardly visit it anyways since 80% of it is wire fed crap that you can get in the metro.
This will only end in FAIL, mark my anon butt.
I'd pay
To support good local journalism.
But they can forget about me linking to $-required stories on the Web.
Perhaps they'll only charge for frivolous content, like sports and celebrity news. That would be awesome. After all these years of "Tom and Giselle" teasers and such littering the page, I like the idea of people who actually want that drivel having to subsidize real news for everyone else.
I love this, from McConville:
"...[Ainsley's] Time's co. overlords had ordered him to keep mum."
LOL, "overlords"! Awesome word.
Of course, you realize what New York overlords have
Boston henchmen! And here's a rare photo of the street where they live:
Nice!
Also, I presume, the residence of such estimable individuals as Beastman and Bob the Goon.
It's worth a try
I'd pay a reasonable price for a web subscription to the Globe.
But I have no idea what the hell I mean by "reasonable."
I'll know it when I see it!
$5.95
a month. Times are tight, you know.
I'd sure go for that!
Maybe "reasonable" is a price that helps toward decent salaries and beefed up metro coverage...
Why, exactly?
What is there at boston.com I couldn't get at the Herald website, or the websites of any of the local TV stations, or Google News, or ....
The bookmark will disappear from my list, and life will go on.
Why do media outlets think they are each such special snowflakes that I would rush to send them my money? I already write a big check each month to Comcast to get on the Web. I am not spending more for boston.com unless really hot porn is one of their new sections.
I think I just came up with a business plan that has a much better chance of working than the one they are contemplating.
People for whom it might make sense
People, like, oh, me, who no longer subscribe to the print paper (except on Sunday; can't give that up just yet), but who still want to read the stories the Globe still breaks.
But yeah, no more links from UH to firewalled stories, or, at least, without a big warning next to them. I wonder what they'd do about their datyime copy editors, i.e., the folks at the TV stations who now basically re-write Globe stories and then add a sentence or two of "no comment" at the end.
why not go ahead and link?
Adam, if the Globe does go to a subscription website, why not link to walled stories? I think there's a good argument to be made for gently encouraging readers to subscribe to an online, green-friendly edition of the Globe that likely will be much cheaper than the print version.
If, however, they do something really dumb and institute a pay-by-the-piece approach, then forget it...
Because paywalls annoy me
I admit it.
It's like when the Herald used to charge for online access to their columns (hey, who remembers that?). I never linked to any of their columns (as opposed to now, when, er, um, nevermind). If I have a choice between a pay-wall version of a story and a free one, I'll go with free.
I realize the Globe has to figure out a way to make money, and they can convince people to pay for their online content, more power to them - especially if, as you say, it helps the enviroment - but I'm not an employee of the Globe circulation department (I'm saying this as somebody who links to stuff, not as somebody who might actually pay for online content).
And I say that realizing that anything I say is kind of silly, given how much traffic boston.com gets regardless of anything I do.
And I say that realizing
Its not just you though. Most online sites and blogs will not post to walled content if they can help it. That includes biggies like Drudge Report, Huffington Post, Slate.com, Daily Beast and the Gawkers/Wonkettes of the world. The Globe has a nationally presence (even if some people like to ignore or deny that.) I see their stories at the national level all the time on blogs, websites and commentary on tv. When Glob e puts up the great wall watch how fast these sources all switch over to other sources. Many times the stories they quoted the Globe in involved non Boston related events so they could find it if they tried hard enough elsewhere.
Ay, there's the rub
The Globe has done a GREAT job at search-engine optimization. I recently talked to somebody from Ireland who says Globe stories often come up ahead of Irish Times stories on Google News when he's searching for Irish stuff!
But a lot of that traffic isn't really monetizable, and might explain why boston.com seems to be running an awful lot of "remnant" advertising these days that brings in only incremental revenue (such as that contextweb link I mentioned initially; the Globe is now even running Snorg T-shirt ads). In terms of increasing overall yields, going purely local/purely firewalled might actually work for a site that actually has a lot of decent "niche" content (in this case, the niche being defined as "Boston specific news" - I'll let others argue whether boston.com content is decent).
Your an internet guy and Im
Your an internet guy and Im sure you use google analytics on a daily basis I am sure. On average how many hits come from search engines on the average website? Ive seen numbers for a couple dozen small, medium and large sites and none of them ever reached beyond 50 percent for direct contact. One of them even has 90 percent of their traffic from search engines. Another is 25 percent referral from other sites. None of them managed to break 50 percent direct access. Of course the Boston Globe is the Boston Globe and may have better numbers but Im willing to wager a large percent of their traffic is indirect and could be stalled by this measure.
Direct access
If the Globe really puts up a pay wall, you'll see their direct-access number as a percentage go way up. Sure, they'll lose some referral traffic, but they'll be smart enough to put up enough of a teaser for each article to keep up their search-engine traffic at a decent level.
But that's really at the heart of the issue: Can the Globe not only offset the loss of CPM traffic from reduced search-engine and referral traffic, but make enough to support a large news-gathering effort? How do they turn boston.com into the equivalent of the Globe of yore, which people would spend a fair amount of with?
For what it's worth, UH's direct-access number is about 35%, which is up from last year. I'd argue it's actually a bit low, since it doesn't include people who click on links in Google Reader and Twitter (those are considered "referrals"), even though they are, for the most part, regular readers. My total search traffic (almost all Google) is between 30 and 35%, which I like, because the less I rely on search engines, the better (on the one hand, hooray for search traffic, on the other hand, I don't want to be in a position where my traffic suddenly plummets because Google decides it doesn't like me.
I would also venture to say
I would also venture to say that your referral numbers would be articifically high because anyone who follows you on Twitter tends to follow your page anyway.
While your search engine numbers are lower then others, it is still 30/35 percent. AKA a third of your traffic. Thats a huge number of people. I agree that depending on google is not great because if they change their methods it could ravage that 30 percent. Luckily the sites Ive been helping with mostly benefited from the new Bing methods but that does mean that someone else suffered at the hands of it. Zero sum game
Agreed
That's the only scenario that makes sense, and it's no irony that the past few years in which the Globe has reduced local coverage coincide with the plunge in circulation. If they want to charge, they'd better give us what we can't get elsewhere, which would be fine. Because when it comes to the things I can get elsewhere, elsewhere is usually where I want to go.
I don't like walled content either...
...but I'm wondering, in the case of the Globe, if the eventual alternative is no content at all because the paper is kaput.
I'm operating at a disadvantage on this topic because I really don't know what the revenue source breakdowns are for a major city newspaper. I understand that ads are the major source, but surely subscriptions are part of the picture too.
Because they won't exist
Because they won't exist otherwise.
Why do you think you're such a special snowflake that you can be a news parasite for life? Because you can read a free aggregator blog run by someone as a serious hobby subsidized by a real job?
Meh
News parasites? Is that what they're calling customers now?
The Globe is free to do what it wants. So are its customers. As much as one might value the Globe, it isn't the only show in town.
As for me, I don't have a "real" job subsidizing my hobby anymore. So far, so good, but thanks for asking.
Hasn't this been done before and failed?
I'm surprised the Times is going to try this again considering the fee for content system pretty much flopped when they tried it a few years ago. If it didn't work with the readership base of the New York Times, how is it going to work at the Boston Globe?
News Corp. is trying to do it
If NYTCo. does it with the Globe but not with the NYT, the word might be "guinea pig."
Globe to be irrelevant in 5,
Globe to be irrelevant in 5, 4, 3, 2
Way to drive down readership, Globe-y
If they think they have problems now, this is yet another way to drive down readership. I don't read it in paper now, and I won't read it at all if they take it offline for free. So there goes THAT ad-revenue, however small.
Not good. It's not just the
Not good. It's not just the price, but how many of us refused to use news sites that required only free registration, when that was the big thing? Just too much of a hassle to log in just to read a blurb found from a search engine, especially when the story's in other papers.
It also occurs to me that the Globe website was never particularly browsable, and even though it's a local paper, I almost never read Globe articles unless I find them on Google News or through an RSS feed.
By browsable, I mean being able to quickly scan a page of headlines and catch up on what's happened since the last time you refreshed. The Herald's local news page, with headlines in chronological order, was always good for this. The Globe just has too many sections, and the headlines are more like puns than executive summaries of the story.
Good point
WBUR has done a fantastic job with their recent web renovation:
http://www.wbur.org/
With such great local competition, I truly wonder how this tactic will help the Globe's long-term strategy (ahem, $) in the end.
Karen Zgoda
http://www.karenzgoda.org
http://www.fussy-eater.com
http://editmymanuscript.com
Ive had a free account with
Ive had a free account with the NYT for years now and still moan every time they ask me to sign in and do sometimes skip them over for WAPO on National Political news that may be more then two days old. I am not proud of being so lazy but lets be honest 75-90 percent of the average persons news browsing happens while we are doing other things.
This is the same reason why Salon.com fell off of my radar. They started with the paid stuff and then tested out some free ads you had to sit through instead and both annoyed me. I haven't been on their site for 5 years now so I am not sure what their deal is right now. They used to be a daily read.
look at it another way: someone worked hard to provide this
Most of us have become so conditioned to expecting news content to be free online -- despite the fact that someone, er, many someones, labored to produce it.
We become annoyed and even angered if we're asked to pay for it, register to access it, or sit through a 15 sec. online commercial in order to watch it.
Similar to the folks who think it's their right to download music without charge from bootleg sites, we've (and I include myself in this!) become monstrously entitled when it comes to expecting any news site to be freely accessible, without hassle or cost.
Of course, it takes two to tango. The news providers themselves never thought through a viable online business strategy. When they started giving it away, they created humongous expectations.
It's a bit different from music pirates
Music pirates think "I'm taking this particular music recording, and the music company that produces it is so un-hip that they Do Not Get It, those losers, and I'll spend my money on alcohol and drugs instead," whereas news readers think "I'll just read the free AnytownBulletin.com because AnytownJournal.com costs money, and it's all the same real world events."
Lots of readers think that news is a commodity with $0 value. As I keep saying, I think the Globe needs to better differentiate itself as worth more than the freebies. That requires educating readers in news appreciation, doing some things better than they now do, and perhaps axing content that is inconsistent with the quality message they're trying to send.
An alternative for the Globe that I've also mentioned before is to make premium addictive junk food, charge for that (wouldn't you rather have a nice big chocolate Red Sox feature than a free stale cracker Red Sox feature?), and then cleanse their souls of that whoring by doing the real news for free.
Totally different
Music pirating ("file sharing") is illegal. Visiting a news website is legal. There's just no similarity.