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."

Comments

Alternative way in

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

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.

Re:Alternative way in

[cain]

Their business model is not selling web access to the news though. Their business model is selling eyeballs. And they can tell advertisers that everyone who subscribes to the local cable monopoly (which is 75% of the local population) also reads the web site - ergo, lots of eyeballs to sell. That's why this article is so disingenuous - it is implying that the only revenue stream (or the only business model) of Newsday is to sell subscriptions to the web site. When that is in fact not true at all.

Re:Alternative way in

[IP_Troll]

mod parent up.

This isn't about paid subscriptions as much as it is about maintaining a regional lock on ISP choice. News12 Long Island and Newsday are both owned by cablevision. If you use cable vision's ISP, optimum online, you have free access to www.newsday.com and www.news12.com. Optimum customers never hit a pay wall, they are allowed on the site. If you don't use optimum online, you get hit with a pay wall.

A major reason that Newsday has so few subscriptions is that the majority of the people in the region which these new sources cater to don't even know about subscriptions because non-optimum customers are the only ones that hit a pay-wall.

Not Worth The Effort

[Dr. Noooo]

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.

Re:$5 a week? How much for a dead-wood version?

[jedidiah]

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.