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Newsday Gets 35 Subscriptions To Pay Web Site

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the now-thats-lucrative dept.

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."

40 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Ha! by ancientt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Ha! by Useful+Wheat · · Score: 5, Interesting

      This is similar to the experience they had over at Salon. This was one of my favorite places to get news until they put up a pay wall, and in December they talked about how it hard hurt their traffic.

      This is a great read, for people who actually care about the discussion of pay walls vs free.

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/dec/03/memories-paywall-pioneer

      It "worked" for us in that it provided some revenue for Salon to survive through the leanest period of its existence. (We'd already completed the latest of three rounds of layoffs, and the entire staff took pay cuts, three weeks before 9/11.) But within a few months, as advertisers began dipping their toes back in the water and the influx of new subscribers who'd flocked to help us out in a crisis dwindled, we could see that the subscription model didn't provide much room for growth. So we tried something new: we put up an ad over the front door of the site. Subscribers wouldn't see it at all; other readers had to watch a 30-second video ad, then they got a "day pass."

      The day pass approach was beloved by the advertisers and hated by many, though not all, readers. More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is "closed" to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.

    2. Re:Ha! by ChromaticDragon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are many things like this where you can alienate of confuse your customer base so much that you simply doom any chance to rollback to your previous state.

      There was a wonderful "dollar" theater around here. It wasn't really all that big but it was well liked and got a fair amount of business. One day for whatever reason, they changed to become a full-fledged cinema. It seems they thought their volume would justify switching.

      Well... one-by-one all their customers found out they were charging full-fare and running the latest films. And one-by-one, these folk scratched this theater off their lists. If someone was seeking a dollar theater, this was no longer one of those. If someone wanted to pay full-rate, this theater couldn't hope to compare with the major cineplexes. But when I mean folk nixed it, I mean completely. Everyone just moved on and forgot about it.

      They vainly attempted to change back to a dollar theater. But they had no more customer base. Hardly any at all. They closed shop entirely soon after that.

      The Internet and Web is a vastly larger marketplace than the neighborhood movie market. It would seem far easier for people to find what you're pushing somewhere else.

    3. Re:Ha! by Lumpy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The problem is that newpapers are completely dead, the body simply has not stopped moving.

      I can get my news HOURS after it has happened or get it from my various RSS feeds seconds to minutes afterwards. Plus I get to filter it to have only what I want.

      Short of puppy training, wrapping dishes, and for poop paper for a bird cage, a newspaper has ZERO value. Even web based they are slow to react and usually are only repeating what I have already read from the various feeds I have.

      There is no way to save the newspaper business. Ebooks might if the media companies get off their asses and not only publish a daily release but also update it's contents every 15 minutes.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Ha! by chudnall · · Score: 3, Funny

      if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.

      Salon doesn't have a paywall anymore?

      --
      Disclaimer: Evolution comes with NO WARRANTY, except for the IMPLIED WARRANTY of FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
    5. Re:Ha! by KevinKnSC · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And furthermore, it's actually less expensive to buy a Newsday print subscription than it is to get just the electronic access, so the article could really be rephrased as "Thirty-five people pay extra to not get a real newspaper."

    6. Re:Ha! by delinear · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't think a newspaper has to be entirely irrelevant. There's little news so vital to me that I can't wait a few hours to hear it, one area traditional media could compete is quality. Well-written, thought-out articles with fact checking (remember that?) would be a value proposition that many of the internet sources, with their rush to be first to publish couldn't afford. If you're not going to print for several hours, use that time to make what you print much better than everyone else and I would happily consume your product because I only have to read it once, not read countless rumours, counter-claims, retractions, etc.

      Unfortunately this type of quality reporting was dead even before the internet came along. There just wasn't a suitable alternative at the time to eat their lunch, the 'net just happened to be the first one that came along and fit the bill. The internet didn't kill traditional newspapers, they committed suicide a long time ago.

    7. Re:Ha! by b00le · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm waiting to see what happens at New Scientist. They are only letting non-subscribers see 7 articles a month -- essentially nil, since it's a weekly magazine. It's really expensive, especially if you don't live in the UK. There's no web-only subscription (I wrote and asked: they recommended the digital version of the magazine but that doesn't seem to come with a subscription to the site...). Now, this is the second time they've tried this. I don't know how long the first one lasted: I went away and came back one day to find they'd given up on it. This time I'll be able to see when they quit because the protection is reeeeally easy to defeat and I'm using the site as much as I ever did.... I don't know what the answer is. The day pass that Salon used to use was fine with me: I didn't have to watch the ads, that were never for anything I'd want, in fact I never pay any attention at all to advertising, because I have very little disposable income.... But whatever the solution to paying for content is, it's not going to be an accountant or 'manager' who figures it out.

      --
      Science fiction for grown-ups...
    8. Re:Ha! by andereandre · · Score: 2, Interesting

      "Unfortunately this type of quality reporting was dead even before the internet came along." Maybe in the USA (I would not know) but this is not true everywhere. In my country (NL), there are still several newspapers which do all those things you mention. They do not have it easy financially but they do not compromise too much and I think (well I hope) that their base of faithful readers will let them survive. And I do believe that the fast-news-skimming generation will be interested in in depth reporting when they are older. But they should make their content available in e-reader format in the short term.

  2. Alternative way in by AndyAndyAndyAndy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!
    1. Re:Alternative way in by cain · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Alternative way in by IP_Troll · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  3. Abomination? by eldavojohn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Abomination? by krou · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's a terribly designed site. At first glance, you can't tell what are links, and what is just plain text. There are just about zero visual clues as to where you should go, what you should do, or what you should be reading. There seems to be no coherent logic to the layout, either, and the dark background with white text does them no favours. If they paid $4 million for this, they got ripped off.

      --
      'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
    2. Re:Abomination? by FlyingBishop · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Backup, servers, and bandwidth all require manpower to keep them operational. I take it *you* don't work in the IT industry.

      And the performance question is separate from the "do I like how this looks question," which is what everyone looks at when asking if this site was worth 4 million. Whatever that money went into, most of it was probably not UI design, and this is natural and understandable for a site of that size.

  4. Nobody is going to pay for news by C_Kode · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Nobody is going to pay for news by Migraineman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nobody is going to pay for a news site for the most part. You can easily get the same news elsewhere for free.

      And to continue this point, it's not just the "free" aspect, it's also the ability to go directly to the source for the information.

      Back in the day, actually not too long ago, the news outlets (papers, radio, TV) served a purpose - they provided a conduit for information transfer. Folks had information (big game scores, courtroom shenanignas, weather forecasts) and needed a way to convey that information to other folks. Similarly, the "end users" desired the information, but didn't have a way to get it directly. The news media connected the two groups, and served a valuable purpose.

      Enter the Intarweb. Suddenly, the end user is directly connected to the information source. The news media middlemen are left holding their hats, scrambling for significance.

      Probably the worst thing that has happened to the media outlets is transparency. When you have the web at yor fingertips, it's particularly easy to notice that the vast majority of news outlets are simply re-branding the AP or Reuters news feeds. Their collective credibility is shot to hell. They've been branded as "middle men" and not as information sources. The web allows you to go directly to the source. Why would I tolerate some reporter's re-hash of a story when I can interpret the source for myself? Case and point - I can get weather information directly from the National Weather Service rather than getting the dumbed-down version spewed by the local TV station or newspaper. They don't add value (actually they remove it) so I bypass them ... because I can.

  5. strange numbers by jandoedel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    5$/week * 35 subscribers * 15 weeks = 9000$ ??

    1. Re:strange numbers by Itninja · · Score: 2, Funny

      Math illiteracy affects 8 out of every 5 people.

      --
      I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
  6. For the record, by aengblom · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:For the record, by AndyAndyAndyAndy · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.....

      Likely, those 35 people are not on Long Island and can't get it delivered. I guess the $0.50 is the online delivery charge... all those tubes and all...

      --
      It's always confirmation bias!
  7. Not as bad as it sounds by cain · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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:

    "Of course, there are a few caveats. Anyone who has a newspaper subscription is allowed free access; anyone who has Optimum Cable, which is owned by the Dolans and Cablevision, also gets it free. Newsday representatives claim that 75 percent of Long Island either has a subscription or Optimum Cable."

    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.

    1. Re:Not as bad as it sounds by vslashg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

      So the potential regional market is only 1/4 the size that it otherwise might have been? Think, without these other access deals, they might have gotten 140 people to sign up.

  8. This just in... by ae1294 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?..

  9. Re:$5 a week? How much for a dead-wood version? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Man Shot Dead By Saloon
    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. ... To read more subscribe to the Deadwood Version of Newsday

    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? ... To read more subscribe to the Deadwood Version of Newsday

    --
    My work here is dung.
  10. "Free Online Newspaper With Your HBO" by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  11. Not Worth The Effort by Dr.+Noooo · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  12. Newpapers Have to Deliver Quality by Greg+Hullender · · Score: 5, Interesting
    As others have mentioned, the Wall Street Journal makes money even requiring people to pay for online access. So does the Economist. I think the real issue here is the quality of the content.

    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

    1. Re:Newpapers Have to Deliver Quality by b0bby · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The Economist doesn't anymore - I'm a subscriber, but I haven't bothered to tell the website that because it doesn't seem to matter. Except recently they've been putting little popup "Become a Subscriber" ads, so I might register just to make those go away.

      I don't know anything about Newsday, but I do think there may be a niche for ultra local newspapers; they can give stuff that the big news sources can't - parades, school sports, local government issues, zoning etc. For an example see http://gazette.net/ - they break MD down to the community level, and still seem to be doing ok.

  13. I'd pay .... only if there were no free sites by petes_PoV · · Score: 2, Insightful
    .. but since there are (and the "quality" of news reports is equally low on all of them), then there's really no reason.

    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
  14. Re:Article glosses over an important fact by gimmebeer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All well and good, but if they are spending $9mil on a website that is only going to be accessible to people who are ALREADY paying for their articles via the printed paper....what's the point? They just spent $9mil to allow their current readers to read the same articles online as well. Excellent business model. They were obviously expecting to make revenue from the paywall, but instead they are proving that the paywall model does not work well. Granted a paper with a larger circulation would have more paywall subscribers by default, but if the percentages remained similar it would still not be worth the investment. It will be interesting to see how larger news sites respond to this.

  15. Whaaaaat? by Logical+Zebra · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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...
  16. They want how much? by LaminatorX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    $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.

  17. Kudos for Eating Their Own Dog Food by rdmiller3 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I think we should congratulate the 35 members of the Newsday staff who ponied up $5/week to subscribe to their own web site.

  18. Re:$5 a week? How much for a dead-wood version? by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.
  19. I'll pay for the news by locallyunscene · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:I'll pay for the news by delinear · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Couldn't agree more. There's a hugely worrying trend in the media at the moment to sieze on content generated by the masses. I don't tune into the news or buy a newspaper to hear what xxbLoGgAl_83xx thinks about the war in Iraq, with the highly paid anchor acting as an intermediary relaying her l33t speak to me. If they want to retain my attention they need to add something I can't get by hanging around online - higher production values, better quality reporting, unbiased facts, well thought-out and researched opinion pieces instead of regurgitated press releases. If all they're going to do is read Facebook messages to me, I may as well replace them with a text-to-speech app.

  20. What's the solution? by gaspyy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's obvious that the current situation is fragile and the media is changing, but what's the solution?

    To recap:

    • Demand for online is on the rise and for print is declining
    • People don't want to pay
    • People don't want to see ads

    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.

  21. For giggles, mostly by Stick_Fig · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.
  22. Re:$5 a week? How much for a dead-wood version? by eldavojohn · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.