Newspapers Betting On The Past May Find Themselves In Trouble In The Future
from the that's-how-it-works dept
One of the "examples" held up by newspaper folks, who think that charging online is the answer, is the "success" of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. However, Jay Rosen points us to Mark Potts excellent analysis of what's happening at the Democrat-Gazette and the conclusion is that the "success" is a lot more questionable than many who highlight it might believe.First, the online subscription process hasn't really been a success in terms of getting online subscriptions. They've only signed up 3,400 subscribers in six whole years -- bringing in a whopping $200,000 in revenue. That's not paying for very much. What the subscription process has done, is slowed down the number of folks ditching their paper subscriptions. Of course, that still might get some newspaper folks excited -- but, again, Potts pours some cold water on that, by suggesting some reasons why this might be unique, including the fact that the population is older, there's little competition (but it's rapidly increasing) and the paper already held a really strong market position. But the key point is that the paper is betting on print -- not the web. The business model isn't driving significant new web revenue, it's trying to cling to the past as long as possible. That's a really dangerous position to be in if someone else in your market figures out how to make the online revenue side of things work out -- because it really isn't that easy to turn on a dime.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: arknsas, journalism, online, subscriptions
Companies: arkansas democrat-gazette
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Further, the $200,000 is based on the subscription fees. Without seeing inside, there is no way to know if there is web specific advertising in there, or any other sources of income.
Important too to consider this quote "the paper's circulation has held fairly steady at around 180,000 papers a day (275,000 on Sunday) over the past few years, while the rest of the industry's circulation has declined steadily and ever faster.". While Mr Potts uses this to suggest that their are forcing people to buy paper copies because the website is subscription only, that sort of assumes that a shift to free online in inevitable, which is not the case.
The author assumes there is some rush to "switch to alternatives" such as online news sites. I realize that Mr Potts is "I'm an entrepreneur and consultant who works with media and Internet companies on strategy and product development.", which suggests he sees only one future, online and free. Such a biased starting point brings out such a biased end result.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
I'm going out on a limb here, and say maybe
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Going down
Hearing of yet another price increase, I called to cancel the subscription.
They offered to cut the price in half for a year.
I took it.
Let's see what happens next year??
[ link to this | view in thread ]