As New 'Digital First' CEO Takes Over At Media News, First Course Of Business Was Dropping Righthaven

from the a-good-first-impression dept

In the newspaper business, one of the few brightspots that we've seen has been the efforts of the Journal Register, which, under CEO John Paton, took a strong "digital first" position, and showed that they meant it by embracing some really great moves that bucked industry trends. So it was great to see that rumors from a few weeks ago that Paton was going to head up the larger newspaper chain MediaNews came true.

Even better? It appears that one of Paton's first acts of business was to end Media News' deal with Righthaven. In true "digital first," mode, Paton made this clear in a tweet to Dan Gillmor:

Media News has already terminated their relationship with RightsHaven.

In a later interview, Paton said doing a deal with Righthaven was a "dumb idea from the start."

This is quite a shift for Media News, which was previously run by Dean Singleton (who also was chair of the Associated Press), who was a big fan of "cracking down" on the internet. He was the one who brought in Righthaven, and was a huge proponent of putting up paywalls, because he thought it added more value to newspapers. Paton, who has spoken out against paywalls in the past, has said that he's not yet up-to-speed on Media News's paywalls to know what to do about them, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the company reverse course soon enough.

Filed Under: john paton, journalism, rules, social media
Companies: journal register, media news, righthaven

Dean Singleton: Please Explain How Charging For Something Magically Gives It Value

from the it-doesn't dept

Mathew Ingram points us to a ridiculous quote by MediaNews CEO, Dean Singleton, who also happens to be the Chairman of the Associated Press, talking up his decision to make one of his papers start charging for online news, claiming that charging magically imparts value:

"When you give it away for free it has no value. When you begin charging for it it has some value."

That's wrong on both counts, and you would think that a major American media CEO would understand the difference between price and value. It's a bit scary that he seems to think that putting a price on something automatically gives it value. Unfortunately, he may have to learn that lesson the hard way. I could say that the blank pad on my desk has a price of $10,000. But that's meaningless, because no one would value it that high. The price you put on something is entirely independent of the value that buyers have for it. If the price you put on it is lower than the value they get from it, then they may decide to buy. But that value isn't created by the price.

Filed Under: dean singleton, journalism, price, value
Companies: associated press, media news

San Jose Mercury News: No One Reads Us Any More, So Let's Start Charging

from the this-will-end-poorly dept

When I first moved to Silicon Valley, the newspaper of record was the San Jose Mercury News. Everyone read it. It did a great job covering the local startup scene, and had some fantastic columnists and writers. But, one by one, those top notch writers left for greener pastures or to start their own things (such as Matt Marshall starting VentureBeat, which came out of the experimental Silicon Beat that he and Michael Bazely created while at the Merc). Then, of course, Knight Ridder came under all sorts of Wall St. pressure and got sold (and some of the papers then were quickly sold again). In the last few years, there's been fewer and fewer reasons to actually read the Merc, and I haven't looked at the paper (or the website) in probably a year or two. That's quite amazing since it used to be one of my first stops every morning. But, these days, all of the news that I used to get from the Merc can be found online from better sources with better writers. Back in March, I was on a panel discussion with a business editor from the Merc, and he and I got into a somewhat heated discussion on the wisdom of charging for news online. I told him that it made no sense, and he insisted that it could work. Apparently, he knew what was coming.

Media News, the current owner of the Merc, has announced that it's now going to start charging for online access to the paper, which seems like a move destined to fail dismally (and quickly). Already it's difficult to come up with any good reason to read the Merc online when it's free, and suddenly they want people to pay for it? All of the info that the paper provides is better provided elsewhere. It's difficult to see how they think that any significant number of people will actually pay to subscribe to the online version that's a tiny shell of what was once a great newspaper.

Filed Under: charging, newspapers
Companies: media news, san jose mercury news

Media News Trying To Make Its Website Both More And Less Valuable At The Same Time

from the good-luck-with-that dept

Romenesko is running an interesting memo from newspaper publisher Media News on its plans to adapt to the internet era (a bit late for that, right?). There are some interesting suggestions in there, but what struck me is how Media News is trying to make its online property both more valuable on the one hand, and less valuable on the other. It talks about taking away content from the online site and forcing people to buy newspapers:

We will begin to move away from putting all of our newspaper content online for free. Instead, we will explore a variety of premium offerings that apply real value to our print content. We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don’t buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay.

Note the problem? It's in that third sentence, where Media News claims it's going to tell users that print newspapers have value. Commerce doesn't work that way. You don't tell your customers what has value, they tell you. All you can do is focus on providing more value. So, this first step seems to be a mistake. It's taking away value from the online property in an effort to try to convince people that the paper has more value, rather than actually increasing the value of the product.

Separately, however, the organization is looking to provide more tools and value online -- recognizing that their online site is not just "the newspaper on the web," but that it allows totally new things to occur -- including more detailed local information and community-enabling tools. That's good... but considering the talk of locking up other content, it makes you wonder how far Media News will actually go. It sounds like they're trying to do two contradicting things at once -- which seems likely to make sure the more important one (providing more value) fails.

Filed Under: journalism, newspapers
Companies: media news