The Day The Newspapers Shut Down Their Sites

Nailed it, JD. Now go figure out the right business model, would you? And hurry up about it.

 

It feels good to espouse what this thread is espousing, but I can't help thinking ...

 

Don't get Angola! dragged into this.

 

Gola's gonna cornhole someone?

 

I don't think charging for online content is the answer. Besides the fact that it's too late to go back to that, consider that at 50¢ a pop, this industry barely charges for its print product. The pittance it does request certainly doesn't cover production costs.

Which brings me to my main point — the print product will be dead in the near future. Logistically, the print product makes little sense. In fact, the only thing holding it back is the lack of advertising revenue, which is slowly rising.

I believe that when a major U.S. daily decides to take the plunge and kill the print, it will succeed if it is positioned to make it through the first six months and first year. If that happens, it won't take long for it to spread through the industry.

While I think a lot of people, esp. those under 30, aren't interested in daily news, it is a commodity that will always be in demand. It's just that the current distribution model is no longer working and needs to be updated. The next step has already been put in place, it's just a matter of taking it.

And no, I don't think it's a good idea to pull the plug on the Web sites. Just pull the plug on the print.

 

Still being on Page 1 of this topic, I'll eventually catch up to the rest of this. But I will first answer this.

There is no way this move can backfire. If we keep going the way we're going, we're gone anyway. This move is brilliant. In the two weeks or whatever, people would be forced to buy the print product. If they refuse, it's their choice to be uninformed. Then, when we bring it back online, we show that we have a product that has value. And it's time to start charging for that value. If the free ride doesn't end, it will end because there won't be any papers (print or online) left. What we're doing now is not a sustainable business model.

As I've said before, part of finding out what will work is recognizing what doesn't work and to stop doing that. I know my work has value. I know my colleagues' work has value. If we stop giving it away, the readers will eventually recognize that value, too.

 

No. "Ridiculously arrogant" is expecting something for free that costs quite a bit to produce.

They don't expect free movies from Hollywood in the theaters or free steaks at the grocery store or free cars at the car dealership or free gas at the gas station ... well, those of us who didn't vote for Obama, at least, don't expect everything is supposed to be for free.

 

It was working out quite well before we started giving the store away for free.

 

People who don't pay for your product are freeloaders, not customers.

 

I don't know if this is true for everyone, but the second I bought a house, I became very, very interested in local news.

I want to know everything about the community I in which own property.

When I rented, I really did not give a shit.

Trust me, the local news will never, never lose its audience.

 

I don't know how consumers could make it any clearer at this point that they have other options for being informed. You are dramatically overestimating the power of newspapers if you think we can "force" people to buy anything -- much less old news on dead trees. As I said earlier in the thread, show me any other failing business that staged a turnaround by withholding their product rather than improving it.

 

Rivals.com has seemingly done all right with a pay model. Why? Because they are giving customers something that the customers don't feel like they can live without - recruiting news they can't get anywhere else. Now, we can argue about whether it's unseemly or not, but the site is so user-friendly. You look up any prospect in the country, and you can get immediate access to a database that includes all of that kids offers, all of his official visits, including the assistant who recruited him, his high school stats, his mug shot, and, best of all, every story ever written about him in Rivals, in chronological order. You get the narrative of his entire recruitment, right there in a couple keystrokes.

Not to mention the message boards where reporters interact with their customers, the story updates and breaking news and, on the team I covered, very, very solid analysis and opinion of, yes, recruiting, but also the team.

They don't just slap a bunch of stories onto the Web site and call it a day. They lead the horse to water, and people are willing to pay for that. And this is a program, the one I covered, that isn't exactly hurting for daily newspaper, TV and Web coverage. Probably one of the top 10 most covered programs in America.

I know we rip and roar about Rivals.com a lot on here, but in terms of knowing how to organize an online news site, they absolutely get it. We could learn something.