A really stupid idea

[JayFarrar]

In my town, we had a local business guy decide that he was finished with the paper and that he was going to start an alternative.
So he hired away one of the reporters from my shop, and convinced a couple of reporters turned grant writers to contribute copy.
His stated goal was to bury the paper.
The guy thought he could generate between $50,000 to $75,000 in annual online ad revenue and that would cover the reporting expense.
The site lasted about six weeks before it went under.

He has since relaunched the site and now is trying to make it a community site like Huffington Post, where registered members contribute copy. Most people who visit it, seem to think it is some online venture my paper has started and we've seen the web numbers, he has been active for about two weeks, and they are bad, really, really bad.
So it is only a matter of time before it comes crashing down as well.
The sites that work come with a credible brand. The local paper.
While some neighborhood sites can work — the ones that are virtual bulletin boards from the local grocery store — they can makes it go. Sites that try to do the heavy lifting of regular reporting, beat coverage, enterprise projects, they just don't work.
At least that's been my experience.

 

[clutchcargo]

Simple. Nothing you put online goes in the paper, and vice versa, and charge for all of it.

Online focus begins with breaking stories, blogs, chat, traditional games stories and video stuff.

Print product is enterprise, columns, takeouts, national wire stuff with once sort-of exception to rule being a couple paegs devoted to brief recaps of breaking stories and games limited to two inside pages. Plenty of photos and breakouts.

90% of us still pretty much just post today's paper to the website and sprinkels in beraking news, with a few bells and whistles hear and there.

Each product should have totally different feel, and charge for both.

Maybe you do the print product just 3-5 tims a week and make each edition substantive.

 

[Fredrick]

clutchcargo has a plan much better than Gannett's current plan of citizen journalists and web only for no charge at all. Go Clutch, Go!!

 

[Lugnuts]

A couple of things... Under my plan, the print editions would go away eventually.

The "fees" charged to the ISPs would start gradually. One penny per subscriber. That way the cost to the ISP and the consumer would be absorbed gradually.

A lot of this would start by the heavy hitters (NYT.com, CNN.com) legally asserting that they own the content and allowing the ISPs to disseminate it for free. After a time, a penny would be charged.

Folks, the ISPs (mine is Cablevision, for example) would gradually take home less profit.

I used to work for Cablevision, and I know a bit about how their internet operation works. It's basically been a license to print money over the past few years. It has almost singlehandedly kept the company flush with cash.

Companies like Cablevision are making a fortune off your content.

Time to cut into that.

 

[Johnny Dangerously]

Simple. Nothing you put online goes in the paper, and vice versa, and charge for all of it.

Online focus begins with breaking stories, blogs, chat, traditional games stories and video stuff.

Print product is enterprise, columns, takeouts, national wire stuff with once sort-of exception to rule being a couple paegs devoted to brief recaps of breaking stories and games limited to two inside pages. Plenty of photos and breakouts.

90% of us still pretty much just post today's paper to the website and sprinkels in beraking news, with a few bells and whistles hear and there.

Each product should have totally different feel, and charge for both.

Maybe you do the print product just 3-5 tims a week and make each edition substantive.

Every time I've discussed this with editors, they can never say whether they think they'd be able to have enough staff to pull this off. The online updates would keep reporters too busy to do justice to enterprise and features, but I heard no editor say, "Oh, we'd have writers who could focus just on those stories for print."

If you had enough people for good quality online and in print, I think you'd have a shot. If you were just throwing stuff into the paper at the end of a busy day of updates, it would show.

 

[sptwri]

Simple. Nothing you put online goes in the paper, and vice versa, and charge for all of it.

Online focus begins with breaking stories, blogs, chat, traditional games stories and video stuff.

Print product is enterprise, columns, takeouts, national wire stuff with once sort-of exception to rule being a couple paegs devoted to brief recaps of breaking stories and games limited to two inside pages. Plenty of photos and breakouts.

90% of us still pretty much just post today's paper to the website and sprinkels in beraking news, with a few bells and whistles hear and there.

Each product should have totally different feel, and charge for both.

Maybe you do the print product just 3-5 tims a week and make each edition substantive.

Every time I've discussed this with editors, they can never say whether they think they'd be able to have enough staff to pull this off. The online updates would keep reporters too busy to do justice to enterprise and features, but I heard no editor say, "Oh, we'd have writers who could focus just on those stories for print."

If you had enough people for good quality online and in print, I think you'd have a shot. If you were just throwing stuff into the paper at the end of a busy day of updates, it would show.

Once upon a time you could have pulled this off. Instead, they cut so many people that you no longer can. Not enough bodies and not enough hours in the day unless you sell someone on working 16 and getting paid for six.

 

[Screwball]

Companies like Cablevision are making a fortune off your content.

Especially at Newsday.

 

[wicked]

I love how everyone says "the idea can't work."

Well, why not try it? What we are doing now sure as heck ain't working.

 

[Read and weep]

Why do people pay $1.50 for a 16-ounce bottle of water - much of which is TAP water?
Water has been free for millions of years. Water is still free in your sink and pretty much any drinking fountain, restaurant, etc ... in the world.
And yet those folks at Poland Springs and companies like them are making billions .... on water!
How did they manage that?

 

[Satchel Pooch]

What about charging five bucks a month to see the paper as it is posted to the site, but keep it free to see everything after, say, noon?

Updates and breaking news remain free all the time, but youll have to pony up to read columns, notes, features, etc. when you get to the office.

 

[pseudo]

What about charging five bucks a month to see the paper as it is posted to the site, but keep it free to see everything after, say, noon?

Updates and breaking news remain free all the time, but youll have to pony up to read columns, notes, features, etc. when you get to the office.

The local weeklies have taken a couple of different approaches on this. One leaves everything permanently behind a paywall accessible to print subscribers only, another one unlocks the archives after two weeks, and ours ... well, we don't have a Web site.

 

[shotglass]

Rivals and the other recruiting sites also turn a profit for what they do.

I'm curious, because honestly, I don't know ... does a site like Rivals really make money now? And if so, how much? Are they killing, or just surviving?