Next up to charge: The Boston Globe

Do subscription and rack sales generate that much revenue for newspapers? At 50 cents a copy, it can't be that much. I don't think subscription sales for print editions bring in that much money. It brings in some, but the money generated from ad sales based on those subscriptions is what carries a newspaper. I can't see how charging for viewing content on the web is going to make that much difference. If anything, at first, viewers and hits will drop. This will hopefully change over time, but even at 25 cents a day, 20,000 people would have to subscribe to generate $5,000. That seems incredibly optimistic for a small return.

 

Under your scenario, $5,000 a day, that equals out to a little more than $1.8 million a year.
That's worth it.
I saw where the NY Times, I think, is making more of circulation than advertising.
I'd say that in two years, the free content experiment will be mostly over on the web. In five years, for the survivors, we'll be scratching our heads and wondering why we didn't charge for content from the start.

 

That's worth it? You realize that a decent-sized online site (mid-major paper) will make $10 million in advertising a year, if not more? I'm also very, very skeptical of 20,000 people subscribing to any site, but it also depends what site we're talking about I guess.

 

By the way, one person sees newspaper revenue ready to rebound.

http://www.borrellassociates.com/wordpress/2009/08/06/the-rumors-of-newspapers-death/

 

I just don't think that freeloaders are who advertisers are targeting.

 

Give me a break. Who the hell have they been spending billions on all these years? (And that doesn't even count "free" TV and radio) Although I will agree that targeted advertising should be better online. At least where I work; they seem to have no clue.

 

You continue to use that freeloader term like everyone on the Internet should be demonized. For the most part, there isn't a way to pay. Why hate on them for using what's available for free?

Even if the "freeloaders" don't pay now and potentially won't pay if there is a paywall, they are still a part of the audience. Don't you think they deserve some amount of respect or thought in this process?

 

Making money off the web product is the great debate for the next five years...I like the ESPN model where the full website is unlocked to subscribers only, while everybody gets free access to the basics (and pretty good basics at that...lol)

Seems as though web advertising would be popular since your company is only a click away, while print ads require the huge effort of picking up a phone of clipping a coupon

Who knows?

I just think people are silly to think they will still get quality information if their newspaper goes down...bloggers and the like are a joke. If newspapers and their websites go down, you are left with the choice behind the sugar-coated PR company websites or the rumor-filled bloggers.

 

Or all those websites run by radio and TV stations.

 

Exactly. The people - and there are many of them - who think they can get the same news value from bloggers and such without newspapers amazes me.

 

Again, I'm using this as a very narrow viewpoint, but without the Baltimore Sun, I'd be just fine with the Orioles coverage provided by Roch Kubato of MASN, MLB.com, ESPN.com, CBSSports.com, Yahoo.com, etc. And I'm not even mentioning sites like Orioles Hangout (which I don't frequent). So in sports, yes, people could survive without newspapers. Would it be better? Of course not. But they'd manage.

 

Agreed.