Slashdot Mirror
Newsday Gets 35 Subscriptions To Pay Web Site
Hugh Pickens writes "In late October, Newsday put its web site behind a pay wall, one of the first non-business newspapers to take the pay wall plunge, so Newsday has been followed with interest in media circles anxious to learn how the NY Times own plans to put up a pay wall may work out. So how successful has Newsday's paywall been? The NY Observer reports that three months into the experiment only 35 people have signed up to pay $5 a week to get unfettered access to newsday.com. Newsday's web site redesign and relaunch reportedly cost about $4 million and the 35 people who've signed up have earned Newsday about $9,000. Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic. 'That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been,' said Jimenez to his assembled staff, according to five interviews with Newsday employees. The web project has not been a favorite among Newsday employees who have recently been asked to take a 10 percent pay cut. 'The view of the newsroom is the web site sucks,' says one staffer. 'It's an abomination,' adds another."
Ha! Take that long standing respectable media. Funny, I'd bet they'd be better off without a website at all. Now there is a way to fix this, though I'm interested in feedback before I try to do anything about it. What we need is a micro-payment aggregation service combined with an advertisement blocking proxy server. Opera is doing the rebuilding on the fly for smaller and faster page loads, and if they combined that with an ad-blocking service for $10/yr and had a "$.02" payment button that sites like Newsday could contract for, then everybody would win.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
Horrible business model aside... it should be noted that anyone with Optimum Online (cablevision's ISP, basically the only cable ISP on Long Island) can access Newsday for free. (Newsday is owned by Cablevision.) So it's not like 35 people are "subscribed" .... 35 people are paying extra for it.
It's always confirmation bias!
Does anybody know how much a "delivered paper" subscription costs per week? I would guess the online subscription doesn't cost much less. Printing it on paper, folding, collating, and driving it to your door step should cost a whole lot more than copying a file from one server to another.
In October, the web site relaunched and was redesigned. One of the principals behind the redesign is Mr. Mancini's replacement, editor Debby Krenek.
To say the least, the project has not been a newsroom favorite. "The view of the newsroom is the web site sucks," said one staffer.
"It's an abomination," said another.
W3C agrees.
Does anyone have a before and after screen shot? Honestly, the site doesn't look half bad. Reduce/condense the amount of information you're throwing on the frontpage and you've got a good site. I don't even see an unnecessarily egregious use of Flash that mars so many news sites. It's a hell of a lot better than 75% of the news sites I come across (even Reuters has this annoying script that runs endlessly). I should note that with my bandwidth here it loaded pretty much instantly. I could see this taking forever on ma and pa's dialup.
My work here is dung.
Nobody is going to pay for a news site for the most part. You can easily get the same news elsewhere for free. The only places I've seen people pay for something like this is cable TV. The reason for that is because you had too to get all the major content.
The reason you can't do that with websites is that any old Joe can't create a TV station, but they can create a news website. If Newssite1.com makes you pay, everyone will go to Newssite2.com to get the same information free.
5$/week * 35 subscribers * 15 weeks = 9000$ ??
Getting 35 subscribers is like getting a one penny tip.
Left in the customer's half-empty drink.
For the record, they sell access to the web site for $5 per week, while they sell the paper for $4.50 including access to the web site. Basically those 35 subscribers are paying 50 cents per day to not get the paper delivered. They also give free access to all people who subscribe to the local cable provider -- which is a lot of people for the local paper.
Plus it's Newsday.....
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
35 customers paying $5 a week? Why, that's going to make a profit in 439 years! It's long term investing, people!
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
If you read the article (I know, I know) you'll discover that 75% of the people in the region already have access to the site via package deals:
So it's actually surprising that 35 people did sign up for it. I'm guessing they are people that moved from Long Island to other places and, for whatever reason, miss reading Newsday. I know it's popular to scream that newspapers are dying, but this is not really a story that supports that supposition.
"That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been." So you expected the project to fail outright from the start.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
Face it, with Newsday, NY Times going to the pay to read model and with the rest of News Corp papers doing the same I think this is the direction the rest of the industry is headed. Though I believe a simpler way to pay would be to have an aggregator like Google charge us for the news and distribute the revenues to the individual content providers whenever I click on the feeds. At the same time, if I prefer to go freebie, I would get the same (but lower quality?) news from one of the other sources all grouped under the same subject.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
You can't extrapolate this to the NYT. Newsday doesn't have the same journalistic creds as the New York Times. A comparison with the Wall Street Journal would be more apt.
newspapers are dead....
People who have their local paper delivered to their door every morning by a real life 'person' tend to pay $5 or less a week so why is the online site so expensive?..
$5 a week? How much for a dead-wood version?
Man Shot Dead By Saloon ... To read more subscribe to the Deadwood Version of Newsday
... To read more subscribe to the Deadwood Version of Newsday
Wild Bill Hickok and those two guys that stole downstairs to save the squarehead kid; tell Ned to stick around so they see what the kid has to say about him. Then he throws down against Hickok and this other cocksucker who draws almost as fast, so it's a toss-up who blew Ned's head off.
Opinion: On the Existence of Whiskey
Some goddamn point a man's due to stop arguing with his-self and feeling twice the goddamn fool he knows he is 'cause he can't be something he tries to be every goddamn day without once getting to dinnertime and fucking it up. I don't want to fight it anymore, understand me reader? And I don't want you pissing in my ear about it. Can you let me go to hell the way I want to?
My work here is dung.
My subscription was $25/mo before I canceled it. The paper delivery person couldn't get the paper to my house before I left at 7:00 AM to go to work. By the time I'd get home all the paper was good for is to start a fire. My city has regulations on how much garbage and recycling you can put out in a given week. Garbage is one week (3 Clear bags of garbage and 1 non-see through black bag for "feminine" products, and other stuff you don't what your neighbors to see), recycling (4 clear blue bags) and compost (large green bin, only for food products no leaves, cardboard or paper) the next week. If we missed a recycling week we would accumulate a months worth of news papers combined with the other cardboard, non-refundable cans and bottles and other packaging. if we put that much out we'd get a red sticker and the city wouldn't take anything which only compounded the issue.
Kermit said it best, "It's not easy being green."
Access to the "electronic" version is included with the "dead wood" subscription price. RTA. It enlightening. The "35 subscribers" is kind of misleading. It's more like 90k subscribers when you include paper subscribers and the local cable company.
If Newsday is one of the only for-pay newspapers online and higher profile newspapers like NY Times are still giving their news away for free, is it any surprise that there aren't many subscribers to the for-pay paper? From the sound of it, their pricing scheme was also way too expensive. Five bucks a week? Sounds like they're pricing it as if they still have to send it to the printing presses. Drop the price to 10 bucks a month - max, and maybe make a tiered pricing model, giving away some stuff for free. Otherwise, why would I even visit the site and how would I know it's worth the price of admission?
Maybe a pay-as-you-go system where you pay a micro payment per article will also be viable in the future.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
That's how I have heard this categorized here in the NY area. See, if you are a Cablevision/Optimum Online sub, you get Newsday Online for free. "That's a $260 Value -- If You Sign Before Midnight Tonight!"
Remember, Newsday is owned by The Dolans, the certifiably insane family that also owns and/or operates Madison Square Garden, the Knicks, the Rangers, the Liberty, Clearview Cinemas, the Beacon Theater, Radio Friggin' Music Hall, and prolly my toaster oven as well, haven't checked lately. This isn't about love or money for the newspaper, this is about things like "synergies" and "paradigms" and "leverage." These are the kind of robber baron sociopaths who would burn an orphanage they own to the ground if the price of diapers got higher than they had budgeted, or they needed to light a lot of their cigars at once and they only had one match left.
Newsday used to be an award winning newspaper. In the 80's there was a very good New York City edition (New York Newsday). They had some truly great writers. The paper actually reported news in the journalistic tradition. Currently, it is owned by Cablevision (following nearly going under thanks in no small part to a circulation/advertising scandal), the size of it's print edition has been shrunk to near comic book size, and while there are still some very talented people writing for the paper, the tone of the paper has really swung to the hard right (as opposed to being somewhat objective). Why anyone would pay for the print edition is beyond me, so I don't know what made them think anyone would pony up for the electronic version. And unless I'm mistaken, current subscribers to "Optimum Online" (Cablevision's Internet offering) can view the Newsday website gratis.
It's important to note that Newsday.com is provided free of charge to Newsday print customers as well as customers of Cablevision's Optimum Online internet service - which (according to statistics in TFA) accounts for over 75% of Newsday's demographic: Long Island residents. Most everyone I know uses Cablevision's internet (it's a local company), it's the cheapest and fastest. They've been laying fiber all over Long Island for *years*. The poster did not include this important fact, which pretty much explains the low number of subscriptions as well as the quote: "That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been,'"
If they charged a reasonable price, they would get a lot more customers. $1 a week.
$5 a week approaches the cost of a new dish network account with 130 channels.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
How much did they spend to erect and maintain the paywall I wonder? I'm guessing it was pricier to keep people "out" than to just leave it as it was.
Read a regular newpaper story in an area where you're an expert. Notice how sloppy they are? How careless with the facts? People have complained about this for ages, but there wasn't much you could do about it. Most communities only had one or two papers to choose from.
Today, though, there's a huge market in online news, and, for the most part, the market seems to have set the price at "free." (That's free as in beer, of course.) It is difficult for me to believe that the market has got the price wrong. (Again, with a few exceptions.)
--Greg
Can we put this Jimenez guy up for worst businessman ever? So they underwent a reform that cost FOUR MILLION DOLLARS, and they got 35 subscribers which was 35 more than they expected. So they spent $4 million in anticipation of 0 customers? Huh?
Before making a website pay-only, the producer really has to ask: what's the market?, not "what's this service worth? So long as the rest of the market requires no payment, there's not a hope in hell of getting any significant customer base. The only chance you might, possibly, have is to somehow change the market you're in. Going from a news service - of which there are many: all the same, to an analysis or insider site might just do it, but I doubt that many people would recognise the distinction.
As it is, this site has got one very valuable asset that few other websites have: a list of people willing to pay good money for something that everyone else gets for free. That's gotta be worth a fortune.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic.
I submit that publisher Terry Jimenez has less business saavy than a 10-pound bag of fertilizer.
I have a bad feeling about this...
for newspapers and will always exist
it will be a lot smaller, yes. and some superstar reporters will spin off from newspapers and become their own internet reporting gateways (see nikki finke: http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/ )
in this way the internet will "atomize" some newspaper reporting where the departments/ individual reporters will report directly to readers, unrelated to any particular newspaper, much like musicians don't need distributors anymore
but despite all the doom and gloom about newspapers and their fate, nothing on the internet can ever or will ever replace the service, for example, the poughkeepsie journal delivers for the residents of poughkeepsie, new york ( http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/ ). newspapers are reduced in prominence, income, and scope, yes. they are however, still indispensable and will always be important, especially in niche geographic areas, like poughkeepsie new york, where no one else can compete with them
if i were the new york times, i'd think about spinning off my state, international, and national bureaus into content gateways commensurate with their current importance and prominence, then i would focus on my city room and go head to head with the new york daily news, the current king of local city content (fuck the new york post and murdoch). but new york city is such a huge market, 3 daily local content bureaus will still do ok business
meanwhile, newsday is long island new york. this is still important and will always be important as a geographic niche. newsday is diminished, but secure
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
$260 a year for access to a B-list newspaper site? Really? The Wall Street Journal online only is $110/year ant they're The Wall Street Journal.
Good luck.
So what happens if you throw a party and end up with lots more garbage than normal?
Over here where I live, the cost of labour and living is low. So we have various people going around the neighbourhood collecting newspapers, plastic etc to bring to recycling places which pay them money for it. Some collect paper and newspapers, some collect plastic.
They normally pay you a small sum for a stack of old newspapers, not much $$, but enough so that many people keep them for recycling rather than throw them away.
Doesn't add up. There have been only ~14 weeks since "late October" (~$2450), but the math implies a year (almost 52 weeks). Are they already hoping their 35 subscribers stay for a year, so that it's actually a projected annual revenue of $9000/yr?
That sucks, we have 9 bags no questions asked. 1st Monday of the month is heavy stuff.
Newsday's web site redesign and relaunch reportedly cost about $4 million and the 35 people who've signed up have earned Newsday about $9,000. Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic. 'That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been,' said Jimenez to his assembled staff
So you expected to be out $4M, but instead you're out $3.991M? Was the point of this exercise to keep the "assembled staff" on board and well-paid through these lean years? If so, incredible charity work. It might have done more help elsewhere, but we can always say that about any charity, so there's no point quibbling.
I think we should congratulate the 35 members of the Newsday staff who ponied up $5/week to subscribe to their own web site.
That is just wrongful.
The whole point of trash collection is to keep it from accumulating so the next Black Death doesn't happen.
Sometimes I think politicians should be bludgeoned with history books until some of it starts to seep in.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Double the viewership!
Woowho!! 70 subscribers!
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
So what happens if you throw a party and end up with lots more garbage than normal?
I take it to an apartment building and illegally throw it in to one of their dumpsters since apartment buildings hire private contractors to remove garbage instead of the city doing it. They have no way of knowing who throws what away so the rules are unenforceable for people living in apartment buildings. If I was to get caught I'd have to pay a $400 fine, but compared to what I would spend on gas to drive out of the city to the land fill plus what I'd have to pay to get ride of the garbage, I'm saving money in the long run...
Not that I do that sort of thing a lot. The rules are really only hard to follow if my wife and I are out of town on garbage/recycling day (Saturday for us). We've both taken a Friday off before to go visit her parents and could have, but didn't, put our recycling out on Thursday instead (we were worried about animals getting in to it, the pick up people won't take it if it's spread all over the street).
What you're suppose to do is take it to the landfill yourself and pay to have it accepted
Just as a side note something I've been reading about that the city is thinking of implementing is selling "bag tags". Basically you buy the "bag tags" (Bar-code stickers) from the city to put on your garbage bags. Supposedly you can throw away as much as you want as long as you have enough "bag tags". I'm pretty opposed to the idea since we already pay taxes for garbage collection plus our home is pretty much a pre-recycling/waste disposal centre as it is. This just seems more like a scam to grab up more money while providing no more or less service. Besides *Reaching for the tinfoil hat* I don't want the city to track what I throw away. How can I be sure the bar-code isn't used to track where the bags were collected from? what if someone uses one of my garbage bags to get ride of their collection of child porn before or after the bag has been picked up? Before you know it the cops will be banging on my door because some junky threw his used needles in my garbage.
I can't find the words to describe how much I agree with you.
I think you posted AC to set yourself up, you chucklehead.
BTW, getting a frist p0st as a subscriber is cheating and you should be kick/banned for it.
but not for opinions on an AP story.
Give me investigative journalism that is reasonably unbiased and you have a lifetime subscriber.
Give me right or left slanted takes on a WH press release or random blogger's "news story" and you're worse than useless to me.
It's obvious that the current situation is fragile and the media is changing, but what's the solution?
To recap:
So how can the newspapers provide content and pay for the bills?
It's easy to dismiss the media as being obsolete and that you can find the information for free anyway, but let's consider something: almost all bloggers and "new media" hipsters get the info from the old media anyway. There's precious little actual content created by bloggers and enthusiasts and it's very difficult to do so.
Case in point, I researched for weeks on info about the software used in the making of Avatar and some technical details. I got the info by finding the companies involved via IMDB, talking to people involved and basically scrapping bits and pieces into a coherent article. Then Cinefex magazine came out with so much more information, all my work looks ridiculous.
how exactly does $5 a week for three months from 35 people equal $9000?
by my calculations, that's $2100 total.
why are they charging more than cover price for their crap website?
They're using their grammar skills there.
$5 a week is way more than I've ever paid for a real newspaper printed on dead trees. How much do they charge for a year's subscription to the printed edition? $1,000? No wonder they only have 35 subscribers.
God forbid, a newspaper wanting to actually charge for the content it makes.
Jack of all trades,master of none
I just subscribed to Newsday.com. I'm Customer36. That's my username. I'm going to be blogging about my adventures with one of the worst ideas for a paywall ever.
Fun fact: Newsday doesn't ask for your credit card when you subscribe. They call you later. Must not have anticipated much demand.
http://shortformblog.com/biz/our-adventures-as-newsday-customer-no-36-the-subscription
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Dear Sir, Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. What?! $5? ...Forget it then.
Dear Sir, Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. What?! $5? ...Forget it then.
It's probably for the better. Distance yourself as far from Deadwood, SD as possible. Since watching it, I've become considerably more abrasive.
My work here is dung.
Its the online paper I read the most due to the wealth of primary material. It sounds like I'll get my opportunity in 2011 when it goes paywall. They will allow 10 free clicks a month, then start charging. I'm only willing to pay $5 a month, but I fear they will charge much more.
Jeez, garbage nazis! It's common here to sneak bricks and rubble into our 70L wheelie-bins. If the rubbish-collectors complain, we just say it's the little old lady next door, and if she can cope with the weight, why can't they?
Mr. and Mrs. Jimenez....
That was 2.
Then Mr. Jimenez speaks at the staff meeting "We need to cut our payroll. By the way, who wants to be a team player and get an online subscription?"
No brain, no pain.
I personally don't see anything wrong with incinerating garbage for energy (the sort that can be incinerated). Especially if some energy would otherwise come from burning coal or oil anyway. This is assuming the incinerators are built so they are less harmful than burning coal or oil.
If you're going to burn oil, might as well use the oil to make plastics first, then when you've recycled the plastic too many times that it's not worth being recycled anymore, burn it for energy. This is why I personally think plastic shopping bags aren't that bad for the environment - since most people can find multiple uses for them before they are finally discarded (recycled/incinerated)- as long as you don't litter with them.
Same goes for paper.
I don't believe it.
The New York Times is completely disreputable; granted.
But so is the whole Journalist profession.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How the hell can a saloon shoot a man?
I read Newsday (paper version) and when you compare it to the other local competition - the NY Post and Daily News - it's a far superior paper. Strong investigative reporting (particularly regarding local government), and celebrity and sports "news" almost never make the front cover.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The problem is simple. Newspapers get updated ?daily? at most?
We don't live in that world anymore. Newspapers are going to die as the aging population who still hold onto them pass on.
This is true of ANY media source.
When was the last time you read an encyclopedia? Wikipedia anyone? Why is that? Could it be that WP is actually updated and maintained on a regular basis? That the relevance of the material is pertinent to its readership... right NOW? Imagine opening a 6-month old encyclopedia and looking up Haiti. No links, no pertinent news, nothing. Just old news.
Books... well, we'll have the classics. But do you really see the book trend continuing? Take college for an example. Right now, you buy an accounting book, published in 2008, 2009, or 2010... You attend class, and everyone in that class has the same book, by the same author. But there are 400 other books on Accounting out there. Some might have better content on a given subject than the author of your chosen book does. What then? Buy two books? No. The answer is in plain sight. The "Accounting Wiki" or something similar, where all these authors contribute to the depth/breadth of it. We're not there yet because, well, we're just not there yet. But it IS coming.
People really need to get their heads around this and contemplate the sheer magnitude of change this world is facing.
Now I'm not saying that "stories" are going to die, or that fiction / non-fiction, etc... will die, but I do believe the distribution of these stories is changing and will continue to change until books have become obsolete. Have you ever read a good book of fiction? What if the author could offer a multitude of variations of their works? Children's version, adult version, alternate ending... the opportunities are truly limitless, once you get past the notion of a "forever set in stone" story.
Bottom Line:
==========
News happens every second. Information changes more frequently than the archaic information distribution methods are able to keep up with. We live in a 1-second world now. If your site/publication/document/application cannot update itself at high interval, or be updated at high interval, that site/publication/document/application is to soon be as extinct as a dinosaur.
Those that can... they will succeed. Those that can't... well...
I really think that the most fundamental problem these industries are facing right now is a lack of imagination on what they can really do/provide/offer.
Get out of the box people!!!
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
Folks, this all about locking competing ISPs out of local content. See also News 12.
35 paying customers? I'd say it's working.
I personally agree with you... somewhat. Plastic bags are useful form more then carrying groceries home. We use them to clear our cats litter, tying up paper and the work in our kitchen garbage can just as well as the garbage bags you have to pay for. The issue with plastic bags is people are careless with them; they end up getting blown all over the place and are a hazard to animals. Up to a year ago grocery bags were free around here. now you're expected to use reusable canvas bags or pay $0.05 per bag. Grocery stores are publicizing this as them doing their part for the environment when really it's just a way for them to make more money.
I think the real issue is we've gone from one extreme (not caring about the environment at all or not enough) to the other (you can't breath without someone accusing you of creating harmful carbon emissions).
I'm all for helping the environment so I do what I can when I can, but when politicians and companies start forcing ME to be more environmentally friendly and then turn around and claim THEY did all the work, I get a little irked. What's worse is in order to maintain public image they have to constantly push the envelope and come up with new ways of forcing us to do more for less so they can claim they've done something.
I kind of wish people weren't so sheepish (including me) so I could see the garbage pile up in the street. I don't see why I have to pay taxes for services such as garbage and recycling pickup, then I have to do all the rinsing, sorting and packaging of the garbage so that someone else will do what their paid to do and pick the stuff up.
Maybe they pay for a yearly subscription, which comes out to $5 a week?
... it does not render worth squat with Firefox 3.017 on Linux. In fact, it renders so poorly that it is obvious that they never gave browser neutrality a single thought nor did they test it on any browser other than IE. Ugh!
I'm being fed information, tailored to an agenda (a.k.a propaganda) and they want me to pay for it? First of all, for example, the BBC News website, has so many grammatical errors it's infuriating and doesn't lend well to trying to squash the racism towards people from India (as it's probably knee jerk reaction to assume ENGLAND could only make such gross errors in ENGLISH that they must be outsourcing their translations/editorial processes... and India is often hand in hand with 'outsourcing'.) On BBC News website, it's so bad, no article on that site lacks a grotesque grammatical error, most of the articles have at least three; the larger the article, the more you'll find. Go take a look, actually read one from start to finish if you can muster it.
So, BBC... a large news outlet, probably getting most of their content from AP, and how might we respect their efforts when they care so little of it themselves to outsource their editorial process to someone who can't speak, read or write English? I've since stopped looking at BBC because I can't stomach the errors in their articles, and find it difficult to lend authority to their articles in light of their carelessness. But BBC News is not the only one at fault, in spite of their inability to write in English, they aren't as bad as say CNN or Fox News when it comes to blatant propaganda and slanted views. I stopped reading and respecting anything from Fox News over 10 years ago, their reports are so engineered and fabricated that only Jerry Springer could make them any more ridiculous and further from the truth.
Bottom line, the primary reason I endeavor to learn a foreign language is to gain access to non-English based news outlets. Something outside of News Corporation or APs reach. Something a bit more raw, truthful and as a result authoritative. Some of the Russian news seem to be much more accurate, but most importantly, I prefer a third world language... where their news sources are in now way in the stream of Western engineered crap.
So not only are the news outlets in America bullshit, fabricated much of the time (aka fibs, stories, lies, totally made up, filler), geared towards make people scared and pampering people from the realities and real horrors overseas (re, Isreal/Palestine)... They want us to pay for this shit? Might I remind the people that services like CBS/NBC/ABC were made free because Radio and Television was a means to have news freely available and ultimately accessible to EVERYONE. Television wasn't a goal to put Real World on the air, it was a means to network the entire nation with information.
I digress, it is today what it is. But I'm still not going to pay for propaganda, so any news outlet written in English or will get their money when they suck it from my ass (Thanks Paulie!).
How do so many normally smart people on here miss the so very obvious? The guy at the paper said he didnt think anybody would sign up for this b/c nobody in their right mind would. The paper charges $5 per week for the website so Cablvision - which owns Newsday - is run by f@ck-face Jim Dolan and he only charges $5 so he can tell peop ehow great it is that if they subscribe to the paper or to Optimum Online they SAVE $5 per week by having free access to the website. It's a gimmick, plain and simple, as CV loses customer after customer to Verizon FIOS this is just another thing they like to promote - like News 12. Simply put, they aren't looking fo r$5 per week online subscrinbers, they want Optimum Online and Newsday paper subsribers to think they are getting something extra.
From the header :
"Newsday's web site redesign and relaunch reportedly cost about $4 million"
"Still publisher Terry Jimenez is unapologetic. 'That's 35 more than I would have thought it would have been"
Really? So you were expecting zero subscribers? What was the point in redesigning the sight then..? I guess if you set your expectations really low, you can't get disappointed!
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
it must be very hard for the news industry owners to let go of all that profit ... but make no mistake, it's gone. whatever they charge, there is always going to be some other source that delivers it for free. the technology to deliver voice, images, and full motion hi-res video instantly, from around the world, is cheap. and, lets face it people that can write an intelligible article or speak eloquently are a dime a dozen.
News stories don't just materialize out of thin air; someone HAS to pay for the reporter's salaries, the news van, etc. If the stories are paid for by advertisers (big business) and government subsidies, what quality of investigative journalism do you think you're going to get?
Woodward and Bernstein were able to dig into Watergate and publish the things they did because the Washington Post was supported by reader subscriptions. Now that our news sources are all funded and owned by big businesses we're getting exactly what THEY pay for.
Personally I would be happy to pay for a newspaper that actually reports something real like they did back then.
Journalists have no values these days. Most reporting is full of yellow journalism, scaremongering or reads like a company press release.
I have no time for low grade news stories create by some guy who thinks he'll change the world thanks to his useless degree in journalism which, in my opinion, holds the same value as the free watch I got in Golden Grahams ages ago.
Perhaps it's time to get a second job stacking shelves if writing press releases is not paying the bills.
I think this is an excellent point. You don't need an MBA to understand that the digital version costs less to produce than the physical version, whether we're talking about books, newspapers, audio, or video. If the digital version isn't less than half the cost of the physical one, most people will see it as a rip-off.
Five dollars a week to read a website seems insane to me. I'd have gone with a model that still gave away plenty of free content, but charged a modest fee (30 bucks a year or so) to read "premium" content. The free stuff is what you can get anywhere, and tends to be brief and superficial. The in depth coverage, the actual reporting, is what costs you most to provide, and is what people should be most willing to pay a bit for. I seems like that model has worked well enough for espn.com over the years.
The model ought to work even better if you're Rupert Murdoch or a similar bastard, and you run about a million media outlets. He could have offered premium access to all Murdoch sites for 5.95 a month, while still providing enough free content to keep the (legions of) broke people showing up. That might actually have found a few takers.
Do we get refunds on slow news days?!?
I almost poohed and peed myself.
Oh well, I guess big businessis doing well this hour.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
How do 35 subscribers paying $5 per week since October (16 weeks) add up to earning $9000.
My calculator says 35 * $5 * 16 = $2800
It's a hard sell when you charge more than good p0rn. Online we are consuming content. This site is selling content. And good adult entertainment can always sell for the highest market prices - be it video, print, live, or whatever. If you are more expensive than your rivals on the dark side, you are overpriced. Nothing - nothing tops good porn price-wise for those of us who buy it.