State of the business is dismal, as we know, and yet ...

Can you back this up? Define "all-time high?" "Always want more"?

I see more stuff being available, but that's different than a people demanding it. If half of it went away, no one would notice.

I'm international, so it's hard for me to follow my sports team, but all I do is read the local paper or the AP story after a game.

There's only so many ways you can read or listen to someone regurgitate the same information.

 

The free alternative is generally worth what you pay for it, too.

 

Yeah. I mean, there's nobody at NFL.com, Yahoo, ESPN, Fox or SI that I'd like to read on football.

 

None of them are Bob McGinn or Tom Silverstein if you're following the Packers.

 

Who? Seriously, for a free-market guy like you, I'd think you'd understand the issue.

 

Newspapers aren't alone here. There's an entire generation of people who want all of their media content for free: music, movies and, yes, what they read online. They'll pay for their internet and phone service (which really adds up) and, from there, they almost expect free. There are young people in our newsroom who get together to watch recently released movies in their homes. Illegally streamed, but they don't seem to care. We all know what's happened with music.

Yes, newspapers made the mistake of giving away content for free for too long, but, you're right, that ship has sailed. What I don't get is why we haven't been able to sell more advertising on the web, at least enough to make what we do work. We were recently told at our shop that online revenue was up but still represented only about 15% of total revenue. Meanwhile, the 85% on the print side was way down.

Circulation is also way down, so it's silly to expect that subscriptions will be the main way to support the company. Subscriptions and sales have never been the chief source of revenue. It wasn't all that long ago that a daily paper could be purchased for 50 cents. We never gave it away but we didn't ask much for it. Now, it has to make up for the loss of classified ads, national car ads and other big-ticket ads that have gone away. What would happen if Sunday inserts ever went away?!?!?

I mentioned earlier an entire generation but it's really carried over to people of all ages. My parents don't subscribe to a paper anymore, something I was shocked about the last time I was home. And even I, who should be more supportive of newspaper content, know all the work-arounds to get read Bob McGinn's stuff (which I used to pay for, actually, when it was a separate item from the whole JS): different browsers, different devices, etc.. Same with reading the NYT.

 

In some cases it's as easy as deleting your cookies. And most everyone knows the work-arounds.

In a fantasy day-dream (heck, maybe there's a movie screenplay in it) I can imagine "stealing" things from the Internet is one of the sins people are called to answer for at the Pearly Gates. Hell would be filling up more quickly than ever.

Maybe newspapers could do a "Thou Shalt Not Steal" ad campaign on their websites. It's as plain as day in the Ten Commandments.

 

Of course your parents don't subscribe anymore? Why the hell would anybody subscribe to newspapers that once were great and now are gutted?? No reason to subscribe; none at all. Plus if for some reason there's something worth reading you can still get it free online for the most part. There's absolutely no reason to subscribe. But the publishers and editors can just shrug and say, "Nobody reads print anymore. It's a new age. People want it on their phones." Of course they don't read print -- the editors and publishers DESTROYED print long ago by putting out these tiny publications they call newspapers. And it is FREE online. What part of that is hard for publishers to understand?? They dug their own newspaper graves.

 

At HS football practice today for interviews. Player's mom: "When does the preview come out? I don't get the paper so I have to ask around about the football preview."

This probably should stop bothering me since it's now the status quo when I talk to folks.

 

Part of point is this: We wail and gnash our teeth constantly about the free content and act like that was the big downfall of newspapers. We seem to be hellbent on getting those folks back paying for the product, as if the individual subscriber is going to make up for what's been lost in advertising.

I'm not so sure if putting up a paywall from the very beginning would have done a lot. We'd still be competing against the things you can get for free, whether it's content, or ads. (Believe it or not, people do pick up the paper for more than just news; using my dad again as an example, he'd go straight to the car ads on Saturdays before looking at the rest of the paper. Guess where he looks for cars now: eBay and Craigslist).

Here's one area where I really think we've dropped the ball on this: Marking not to teens and college kids but to young professionals, families and new-home buyers. The housing boom would have been a great time to push subscriptions, making people think getting the daily paper was as important as getting the phone, cable and internet hooked up on Day 1. I don't think that happened.

 

You must be a great person to work with.