What should we do? Very serious question..

Thought so. And I agree with that last part, too.

 

As mentioned above, the real question is: How do we make the electronic medium profitable?
Online ad revenue is low, and the average online reader will not pay for content.
That's the real quandry.

 

When the profitability margin is there, then the print product will die a pretty quick death. I know newsroom management types at some major papers already have adopted this mentality: Before, there were certain things we didn't cover because we didn't have the space. Now, we have unlimited space.

And the profitability threshold might not be as high as some people think. If you're not paying for newsprint or circulation staff -- or if you get it to where you're only paying a small fraction for those things compared to what you are currently -- then clearly you don't have to sell nearly as many ads.

I'm curious who the ABC is attempting to tackle circulation figures in the computer age. Is it as simple as counting web-page hits?

 

We get Web traffic numbers presented in a variety of ways: page views, unique visitors, sustained views, etc.

 

Not to threadjack this too much (it's not worth it), but the legwork depends on your paper and your area. At my previous stop, we were a 20K with appx. 20 high schools in our coverage area. And we always had a couple dozen athletes to look out for on Signing Day every year. That's a lot of phone calls, and a lot of work, for a reporter or two when you only got four people on staff.

We blew the hell out of recruiting the day before and day-of, but we didn't run a whole lot the rest of the time. (We did, however, have prep notebooks throughout the seasons where we added a note/brief that City High's such-and-such verbally committed to State U, etc. That seemed to satisfy interest enough to tide them over 'til Signing Day.)

 

I swear I'm not trying to be a smartass when I say this, but I thought that's what the National was supposed to be.

 

People do pay for online content.
The Wall Street Journal, to name one, has been very successful at it.
If all the papers went to the pay model, and the key would be all, then it would work.
You couldn't have some major players not participate though. It would have to be everyone.
It's sort of like TV. If you want the real basics, you can get them for free. If you want specialized content you have to get cable or a dish and pay for it. If you premium content, you have to pay extra, like HBO.
You also have to get places like Yahoo, Google, etc., paying for the content they put back up on the web. If they want to pay for AP, that's fine. But they need to laying out some cash for everyone else. Then, they would in a way become the internet's cable companies.
That's really going to be the next big step.
When you read the blogs, the things they always bitch about is the NYTimes pay wall,  for the premium select content. Without the major players involved, the blogs are pointless. And, they know this.

 

Shouldn't college beat writers and preps writers handle recruiting stories?

 

I think part of it is making the online content worth paying for. ESPN.com seems to be doing pretty well with its Insider stuff. If you want to read rumors or Simmons' archives or whatever else, you have to pay. The problem with most newspapers online sites is that it is just the basic stuff you can get in the print edition. Maybe newspapers need to start having writers write exclusively for the web, or have beat writers doing blogs that cost money to read.
I don't know what the answers are by any means, but I think papers must make the content worth paying a monthly fee for.

 

Rivals.com is not real journalism.

 

We're going to be fucked sooner or later.

But they still need writers for the on-line sites.

 

I heard that argument 10 years ago, and it's being exposed as lame.

If the chains can manage to snag most outlets, they can have people at other papers write for those sites. It's already happening in print anyway.

The end result? Even fewer jobs.