Idea for a new paywall model?

Try away, but keep in mind people aren't going to put money in some account that will be debited later. Also, people won't pay for so-called "premium" content. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tried it with the Packers and it failed. Why would anyone pay for major professional or college sports print content?

 

Eh, that's pretty vague. What type of content did the MJS offer in the "premium" subscription? Feature articles and that's it? I'm not doubting, honestly asking. If you're not offering videos, podcasts, podcasts 2.0, podcasts 3.0, tons of blogs, live chats, etc., etc., then you're not making it something people would pay for.

 

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also had premium content for the Braves. And it failed.

And everything your suggesting costs money to produce. Lots of money. You either let the regular content suffer or you hire more people. If you let the regular suffer, you lose readers/subscribers. If you hire people, you pay salaries. Both cost more than it will bring in, esp. considering every attempt at premium content has failed. Even ESPN's Insider isn't a big moneymaker, if I remember right, and they have some great stuff.

 

Everything you suggest, from blogs, podcasts, video, and chats are available for free and usually at much better quality than what newspapers can produce (except for blogs). Who wants to watch poorly produced video of a couple print journalists talking about sports. You're also not going to get money selling access to a blog.

Content already available for free from other outlets is good enough compared to whatever newspaper people can concoct.

 

The idea is flawed in that Sling wouldn't work under the plan you mention because it would go bankrupt. If people could drop their full subscription and just get Sports, or just News, or just whatever, we're more likely to lose subscribers that drop to a one-tier subscription rather than keeping the full paper's offerings. And while it would appeal to some, I don't think a lot of places would get enough subscribers at a high enough rate to replace those who dropped down. There's a give-and-take there that you don't account for.

Plus, there's a reason Sling and cable make you subscribe to those other channels and a reason newspapers make you subscribe to the whole thing. It's bad business if you don't. Why? Because the networks and cable companies sell ads on those other networks, and that helps pay the bills. And newspapers sell ads all over their website and throughout the paper, and the ads sold in one section help pay for great journalism in other sections. They support each other. Some times of the year, Sports makes money. Other times, it hemorrhages cash. In your model, we'd lose the overall cash to get a few subscribers at a lower rate.

Is this better than a hard paywall? Sure. But the best setup is still a soft paywall and setting yourself up as something people can't miss. Give them content throughout your product that they want and they'll subscribe, or be so good in the area they want and they'll be willing to pay for everything so they can get that.

 

I wasn't even talking about so-called premium content. Just your regular content, which some newspapers hide completely behind a hard paywall.

 

Doesn't matter. People aren't going to pony up cash for "a-la-carte" newspaper content.

 

The problem is simple, and fatal: any market that offers a big enough scale for the idea to work in theory is a market that already features multiple websites providing the exact same "premium" content for free. Take baseball. All of the rabid baseball markets have at least two websites traveling with the team: MLB.com and a regional sports network site. Boston and New York both have three, I believe. Most of the beat writers for these free websites were hired away from the newspaper in town. A lot of them are the senior writers on their beats. Why would anybody pay for the newspaper's premium content when they can get the exact same stuff -- and often better -- from CSNWhatever.com for free? It just won't work. And any market that doesn't have that kind of competition is probably too small for the scale to work. If you charge $9.99 for high school football stories and you work for a 20,000 circulation paper, that's $200,000 a year. Better than nothing, sure, but in the grand scheme of things it's nickels and dimes. You'd probably end up spending a good chunk of that building and servicing the platform.

Except for very, very specialized niches, the idea of paying for content is dead, across the board. I won't do it. And if you are honest with yourself, you probably wouldn't do it either. Even if just for the hassle of taking 10 minutes to dig out your debit card and fill out the form when you could have used that time to find the information you are looking for elsewhere on the Internet for free.

 

I disagree that no one will pay for it. I pay for a couple of online subscriptions. You just have to make yourself a must-read. Make your content so much better than anyone else's that people feel they can't miss it. Concentrate on what you can own that no one else will do as well. Sure, some free sites will chase you, but you'll likely have more depth. Plus, you can give them value outside of just Sports that other sites might not be able to match. Will some people still take the free stuff? Sure. But plenty will subscribe to get the best. But trying to do it a la carte or by section is a mistake.

 

And if the beat writers for a lot of the web sites are better than the newspaper beat writers, the newspapers are employing bums. I can tell you for our local college football programs -- OU, OSU and Tulsa -- the beat writers for the major newspapers covering them (the Oklahoman and us) are FAR superior to the web sites covering them. Ditto with the Thunder, where the Oklahoman's main competition is ESPN.

 

You're being naive. Maybe Okahoma is a rare market where it would work. But go look at the guys in New York, Boston, Philly, Chicago, St. Louis, etc. who are working for websites. They are the guys who were the "must reads" in their market forever. I know it is a blow to most of our egos that people don't value our work enough to actually pay for it, but they don't, because they can get most of what we do elsewhere for free. That's just the way it is, and every experiment that has attempted to prove otherwise has failed. There might be some value in creating a premium content section for digital extras, provided it does not cost any extra overhead. But taking current traffic and moving it behind a paywall isn't the answer. It just isn't. If you believe it is, you are ignoring a mountain of real-world evidence and theoretical logic in order to place your faith in what you wish to be true. That's just the way it is.

 

Not naive at all. In a handful of the biggest markets, you're right. I'd argue you're wrong in St. Louis because the Post-Dispatch still does some great reporting and has done a great job on the stadium/Rams relocation story, but I admit I only read it when I'm up there, which is two or three times a year (they owned the Ferguson riots, though). In a lot of college markets (arguably most outside of Alabama and Texas), the websites aren't putting out the quality of reporting that newspapers do. But even in those cities, the papers can find other things to dominate -- local government, for example. Sports isn't the lone reason people read newspapers. In fact, sports is generally way down the list whether we like it or not. But you can be a must-read for a lot of reasons.

Paywalls that allow a limited number of views a month have worked better than premium content in almost every case. There's a reason the newspaper sites that had that stuff have killed it. That's real-world evidence.

And here's real-world evidence, too -- we use a paywall that allows 10 free views a month (I think, might be 12). Guess what? When we went to it, we increased our digital subscriptions and we've grown page views every year. It can work. You just have to produce a good product.

I'd love for premium content to make money for papers. I'd love for subscriptions to just certain things to work. But there's already damning evidence out there that shows it won't.