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Paid Online News Venture Fails To Get Subscribers
Ian Lamont writes "The idea of migrating people from free online news content to paid subscriptions has been dealt a blow. A venture meant to fill the void left by the print Rocky Mountain Times has attracted 3,000 subscribers — just 6% of its original goal of reaching 50,000 paid subscribers by Thursday. InDenverTimes.com is currently free, but the plan was to have gated premium content starting next month for a $5/month subscription. The project has entrepreneurial backing and articles from journalists who used to work for the print-focused Rocky Mountain News, which closed last month. However, a lack of paying subscribers and low online ad rates means that the venture might have to scale back its ambitions."
It was the Rocky Mountain News that shut down...
I am just going to leave this here. Clicky
If you can't link directly to it - it's pointless; if you can direct link - why pay for it?
Eventually the over-valuation of old media forms will rebalance to make web-ads more viable.. then "more" could be "much".. question though is when?
The Wall Street Journal is a newspaper that's been charging for online content since as long as I can remember their site. Crain's Chicago Business is another site that charges. I pay for that site since it covers Chicago business news much better than any TV station in Chicago does.
See some sort of pattern? People will pay for the content if it is valuable enough. If it's Perez Hilton's blog, no one cares to pay for it. Many times, WSJ is the first one to break some sort of major news story. Crain's covers Chicago Business in depth and has access to local business leaders because of it.
It doesn't matter that others in their peer group give crap away for free. If you put some effort in to making a good product, people will buy it.
Except 'selling ads' doesn't work and it doesn't come close to the amount of money made from print ads. That, and the tremendous problems that the current recession has brought to newspapers, is why they're considering charging for access. This venture is a bit different in that it's trying to replace a failed print paper not augment one.
Opinions go back and forth on this and most of them are not unbiased. Tell certain people that you have to charge for online news and they'll call you a Luddite who lives in the past, chases already failed dreams, etc. But I think most people who know anything about the industry and its economics know that online news is not a winning economic proposition, particularly if it is funded by ads. Those who believe that it is a winning model have to assume that things will change drastically after the recession. No one really knows but I suspect that they won't and this has been a foolish business strategy.
Nor is news free. In fact there is talk now of getting most print based web sites to coordinate the change to subscription. Thus you go from 'all the news is free' to 'no news is free.' People who say the news is free are idiots. It takes a tremendous amount of work and money to cover the news in a substantive way. And this has nothing to do with ideology. It costs the same for both left and right leaning papers. So news may seem free but it isn't. There is a large cost and for it to continue someone has to pay for it. In any case print papers are finally realizing that they are losing readers, and perhaps advertisers, because there is this thought that news is free and that it doesn't make sense to pay for a print newspaper.
They thought they might counter this with online sites and make up the lost money in online advertising. That didn't happen. So in this recession, with many papers filing for bankruptcy protection they have to consider all options, including pay sites. This would make little sense if people can get the news they want free elsewhere. But if all newspapers institute the same policy things might change. Newspapers know it is a huge gamble. But so is bankruptcy.
They might make more money from ads if they could get people to stop blocking them.
Flashing high contrast colors, telling users they're infected, blasting users back 10 feet with unexpected audio, waiting excessively longer to view a page with ads, spyware... fuck I could go on for days. Many people don't even trust ads enough to even click on them when something looks interesting.
Three most pushed buttons on your remote? ch-up, ch-down, mute. Making your ads 10 times louder didn't get them heard. It got them muted. When I need to make a collect call? I hit 0. I hate those ads so fucking much.
Someone needs to man up and say... no I won't run your ad because it gets us blocked. Sorry you can't run that ad on EZFM 106... its what makes people use mp3 players exclusively in their cars. Sorry we think this ad sucks so bad that it causes people to ch-up/down or mute. Sorry your ad suck so bad that even honest citizens are turning to torrents.
I want this account deleted.
Well put, but I wish more people understood what 'valuable' really means.
People everywhere get that supply and demand is fundamentally different on the Web, but they get the emphasis entirely wrong. I've written about it in more detail elsewhere, but here's a quick summary:
You can't just arbitrarily limit supply and expect it to magically increase in value. The mechanics of digital media make that impossible. You have to have something that's inherently valuable in the first place.
For most people, the generic fluff that fills up 90% of their local newspaper is not something they would have paid for, if they'd had the choice. On the Web, they have that choice, and they don't pay.
I write for two newspapers, and also publish online. I'm sympathetic to the plight of the traditional dailies and weeklies. I just wish they'd get a clue.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.