Slashdot Mirror
Online Newspapers Turning a Profit
PCOL writes "The Asia Times reports that after years of losing money, online newspapers are starting to pay off. The New York Times has gone from losing $7.5M on their site in 2001 to an $8M profit in 2002. The new profitability is attributed to changes in the technology for delivering ads which make it possible to embed advertising in news stories and tie the ads to articles related to reader's interests without resorting to pop-ups and banners. As print newspaper readers age and die, no new readers are replacing them and one survey found that 46 percent of all journalists believe that within 15 years their publication will only be available online."
It makes sense that the most profitible orgainizations on the Internet are the ones that are serving the purpose for which it was created (information dissemination).
I would still like to see a buisiness model for the Net that is something other than the "Give stuff away for free but pop-up ads" model.
I think that once Micro-Payments roll around to being feasible, it will be alot easier for companies to get paid for what they do without having to crowd up the Internet with those fsking ads all over the place.
Flash delivered and java flashed out. I hate registering for everything. The spam mail keeps increasing everytime I give out the email address.
It seems to me as the main advantage of newspapers printed on papers is that it is much more comfortable to look at than a computer screen. It is also more comfortable to read in a favourite chair.
I can't imagine that large portions of the population will be willing to give these comforts up for less than a buck a day.
Of course, one day ultra-light laptops with revolutionary, easy-on-the-eyes screens may be commonplace; but until then I would not count out the printing press.
Tor
It'll be a shame if print newspapers die out.
I'll admit that I'm speaking a bit from nostalgia here, as I do enjoy sitting down with something physical in front of me. I also tend to think of the papers as having more substance, somehow, than their online counterparts-- as if seeing all the pages in front of me will give me a fuller story than clicking link-to-link.
But the real reason I see the death of print media as a shame is the historical record the papers provide. Any library can archive their old papers for reference for all. Electronic media, as we're all aware, is subject to technology shifts, media that decays considerably faster than paper, and so on. It takes a fire, or years of neglect, to do the same to the physical object. A mistaken click of a button in a database somewhere could lose years of information, and what then?
keep dreaming if you think ads are going away if you pay for something.
Two plausible answers: /. effect.
/. effect!
1. Yes, thanks to the
2. No, thanks to the
Online papers are great, and are my primary source for news(I quit TV a year and a half ago), but an online paper is not quite a substitute good for a real world paper. They are still easier on the eyes, than computer screens, they can be picked up in any convenience store, you can't roll up a computer and threaten stray dogs with it, etc. I'm sure readers can think of many more ways that online newspapers and physical media have their own advantages and disadbantages. They are to disimilar for some %46 of real papers to be eliminated.
If the newspapers are only available online, it will be extremely easy to distribute the information without any sort of paid subscription. Case in point, the numerous posters who mirror / inform on how to circumvent the New York Times' registration. This is why DRM is going to be wide-spread: people want to do things online that they currently do in the real world. This requires real world limitations. DRM provides this.
It adds up. I think a good chunk of that cost had to do with getting the extensive archives of the New York Times into a digital format.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
I have a hard time believing that the internet is the sole reason for declining readership. Other reasons may include the ever lower quality of the reporting, ie. the increasing coverage of the entertainment industry and the decreasing coverage of old fashioned "hard news" and investigative reporting. Diminishing faith in the objectivity of the coverage could be a reason also.
Although the internet is obviously partially to blame, I think most of the newspaper industries problems are self inflicted.
Sheesh, I can copy-paste the whole thing without problems (something people often do when a site is getting slashdotted anyway). Their biggest problem are all the sites providing essentially the same news. With the group bookmark, I open the biggest 3 newspapers in my country + one online newspaper + one regional newspaper. Usually, they have basicly the same stories.
DRM works much better when you are providing exclusive content. Is artist X only availible through DRM-crippled service Y? Well, since I'm a great fan of X, I'll consider it. But if I want to read about the latest happenings in Palestine or Iraq, and you wrap that in DRM, forget it. Then I go somewhere else. The newspapers simply don't have a monopoly on news, even if they may have a few "Exclusive stories".
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
One problem I have with obtaining all of my news online is that editorial changes to the article can be made after publication without being noted.
This means that facts and 'controversial' ideas can be edited, modified and even deleted without notifying the public. I have several friends who insist on copying the articles they read directly to their hard drive because they have experience with articles 'disappearing' or changing without being noted.
Posting online allows news sources to get the news out much faster than was ever possible in the past. It seems to me, however, that it also requires a much more stringent approach to journalistic 'integrity'. In the neverending fight for readers and stories, papers can publish articles containing misinformation simply to get the story out first and then change the content later to reflect a more accurate portrayal of events.
If the only source of news is the web, how is the public supposed to know that things were ever changed? Human memory is questionable at best. Think 1984 (i know i know i know) for a second and consider Winston's job of rewriting news and, therefore, history.
Oops- forgot to remove my tinfoil hat...
That's ok, Jesus likes me anyway.
Here is an example. Consider "Poll: Hong Kong residents optimistic". I have been able to refer this article to several friends and acquaintances over the course of several years. Unlike an article from an old newspaper, the online article will not be lost or will not disappear with time. The article is shocking and dispels many of the myths about Chinese society. Before reading the article, most Americans believed that the Chinese are like, well, Americans. After reading the article, most Americans believe otherwise. The majority of Chinese in Hong Kong (to the shock of many Americans reading the article) actually cheered the Chinese government and supported the unification of Hong Kong and mainland China.
Anyhow, by ensuring that we all have an accurate picture of the world, as citizens of Western society, we can better ensure that Western governments enact legislation that best deals with other nations and peoples. Better immigration policy would be one result of the new online news.
Newspapers might as well die (so long as TV news dies as well). American journalism is dead anyway. Not only are most major cities losing out to a single paper, but papers are mostly just official news (news taken from official press releases). There is indeed little to no investigative reporting done anymore, and this is sad.
Social Contract? I don't remember signing any Social Contract!
That's a good point, actually - they can claim that the NY Times website makes money, for example, but if it was a truly standalone operation they wouldn't have all that content available for free, would they? A web-only newspaper gives a more complete picture - and it still ain't pretty...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
The DoD funded the Arpanet because big honking computers were expensive. It just wasn't worth the money to buy one for your group when another group a few hundred miles away already had a computer that would do the job. All that needed to happen was to hook them up.
Defense had nothing to do with it. "Surviving a nuclear attack" had nothing to do with it. Getting the most computer power from a limited and geographically-widespread number of computers had everything to do with it.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
46 percent of all journalists believe that within 15 years their publication will only be available online.
In that case, I hope the newspapers themselves are diligently archiving their electronic editions, hopefully in forms that would make an Orwellian rewriting of history impossible.
The coolest voice ever.
Actually, televised news has historically been the biggest scapegoat for declining newspaper readership. Given that TV is even worse than the newspaper for "human interest" stories, I think it's fairly likely that the Internet is just the final nail in the coffin. Big stacks of paper simply aren't an efficient means of distributing news anymore.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You bring up an important point.
The Internet is also a great way to spread bad or biased information.
How do you know CNN is to be trusted? That the conclusions from the poll are corrected?
Personally I don't trust CNN's content. They very often don't have a clue about what they're talking about, and often push an agenda outright.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
I'm in the business, and it's more complicated than that.
First off, you're wrong that the companies that set up separate online/offline business have "entered the Web half-heartedly." On the contrary: The companies that set up separate structures (Cox, Newhouse, KnightRidder) invested far more than average to do so. Often the impetus for separation was a (1998-era) dream of cashing in on the stock market. On the whole, that model has not worked well.
Secondly, the key driver for success in this space is unified/integrated ad sales, not integrated editorial workflow. Effective deployment of Internet "upsells" in the classified advertising process and integration of Web offerings into special campaigns is the key. These do require tight coupling of Internet and print processes.
On the editorial side, tight coupling actually works against quality; a new site that is run by print editors is likely to be dull, slow, and non-interactive. The best news sites in terms of quality have their own dedicated editorial staffs that are capable of collaborating with print.
Sharing budgets is not a requirement of any of this. While it may be difficult to track expenses by product, most of us make a very serious attempt to do so, because we need accurate information in order to make sound management decisions.
Most newspaper companies do a fair job of tracking incremental expenses and incremental revenues that are Internet-related, on that score, most of the major newspaper companies were significantly profitable on the Internet last year.