You'll have to pay to read free newspaper online
By adamg - 10/15/09 - 8:23 am
The Bulletin Newspapers, which cover towns and neighborhoods from Norwood to the North End, today moved to a pay-to-read system online: The chain is now offering PDFs of its weekly papers for $12 a year, instead of providing free, ad-supported access to its stories.
The chain is the first in the Boston area to move away from free online access, although the Herald at one time did charge for access to its columns. In an editorial, the Bulletin explains the rationale:
... It is no secret that the newspaper industry is bleeding red ink right now. The economy has hit us badly, but our wounds are also partially self-inflicted. Print media was caught up in the Dot Com craze of the 90s and thought it necessary to put up everything they had online for free. Bad idea. Quality content is not a loss-leader. It is a commodity; it has value, and giving it away without a proven methodology of generating revenue elsewhere is a recipe for disaster. Just ask the Boston Globe, the poster child for stupidity. To raise revenue, they increase the cost of their print editions, but continue to provide all of their content online for free. Hello? Was anyone surprised when their print circulation sank to all time lows and their advertisers scattered like rats on a sinking ship? What about online revenue, you ask? Current studies have found that for every dollar lost in print advertising, newspapers have picked up 14 cents in online advertising. How would you like to invest in that business plan?
Advertisers are the lifeblood of this business, and right now every time someone chooses to read our content online, it is one less reader seeing ads on our printed page. It is crucial that our advertisers continue to receive a terrific return on their investment with us, and providing a product online that also displays their ads is the best way we can think of to do that. ...
Comments
Link to the chain's web page?
By Ron Newman - 10/15/09 - 8:40 am
Although you obviously can't link to a PDF that's behind a paywall, can you link to whatever page they're using to sell this service?
The rationale doesn't make sense, given that these newspapers don't charge for paper copies. If the PDFs are exact copies of the paper versions, don't they contain all of the same advertisements?
Link added
By adamg - 10/15/09 - 8:47 am
One possible issue: Online ad rates are way, way lower than equivalent print rates. Maybe they were feeling pressure from advertisers to give them something closer to online than print rates?
Out of area
By Desslok (not verified) - 10/15/09 - 9:34 am
Even though the papers are free locally, like most weeklies there is probably a sizeable out of area readership. Retirees who moved to Florida. College students. People who relocated but still want to keep tabs on their hometown. These folks may be willing to pay for a subscription.
Beating a dead, rotting
By anon (not verified) - 10/15/09 - 10:39 am
Beating a dead, rotting horse.
Are they part of News Corp? Or just signing on to holding on for dear life?
Hubris
By massmarrier - 10/15/09 - 12:02 pm
That model works for papers that provide tangible benefits from content. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal are examples, and even they only charge for a small subset of their content. Neighborhood tidbits and gossip won't cut it.
OK, how about this?
By adamg - 10/15/09 - 12:07 pm
They're not trying to make a ton of money online; just enough to cover the costs for people from away who want a copy of the paper - and satisfy those advertisers who do want to be online.
The chain's bread and butter is, obviously, print. Print seems to work better for small neighborhood/town weeklies than certain other global organizations we could name.
The Bulletin papers never seemed to do particularly well online, so why bother getting all Web 2.0ish at the risk of eroding print ad revenues?
I don't necessarily agree with this, especially not the use of PDFs only (but then, I wouldn't, given the work I've done for the Dorchester Reporter), but I can see the calculus. The daily paper in Newport, RI, recently did the same thing.
Lesser copy editors
By anon (not verified) - 10/15/09 - 3:25 pm
And one fewer copy editor doing his/her lesser job.
And one step farther along the path
By Jay Levitt - 10/15/09 - 8:55 pm
and further into debt!