over 140 newspapers are going to start charging.
 

Rupert is a true leader in his industry I wish we had a few like him. He started the spark.

Newspapers Adapt to the Times: Will Charge for Online Content


It's amazing that it took this long. But MediaNews Group, which owns the Denver Post and more than 140 other papers, plans to start charging users for online content. "We cannot continue to give all our content away for free," says CEO William Dean Singleton.

Singleton went on to say, "We continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free. Not only does this erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business — the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis."

Current and future print subscribers will have full access to online content, while those who want digital-only news will be directed to a separate paid registration page. Not only is this a good idea, but the print newspaper industry basically has no other choice.

Consumers have any number of choices from which to get their news - Google, blogs, Digg, CNN to name just a few. What these massive media sources cannot offer is the local flavor of newspapers - the columnists, the beat reporters and the in-depth coverage of special interest stories. And why not charge for this content. Not only is it an additional revenue stream, but it also supports the overall goal of the industry, to sell newspapers, sell advertisements and gain readership.

For Web professionals and publishers, there's a lesson to be learned here.

this is from website magazine

he will stop charging when traffic goes to nothing, fools

If they all do it. traffic may drop but then it will come back.People are going to have to be reeducated. As we know free doesn't work as a business model.

I pay for my subscription to the Wall Street Journal. It's good content that I can't really find elsewhere, I don't mind paying at all. I don't know if the average reader cares though. They talk about "local flavor." I don't care about local flavor, I don't know how many people still do.

Papers I read online I would gladly pay for a subscription.

The papers that do not charge must be loving this. They will see much more traffic and ad revenue generated. I get the LA Times, WSJ and NY Times free on my iPhone.

haha your local flavor prolly isn't too exciting :winkwink:

that's stupid. They need to give it away for free and monetize the traffic with ads.

Don't remind me.

I agree with DateDoc, I think it'll kill ad revenues which is where they make money to begin with. I read some European papers online daily that give you a good amount of articles for free and charge if you want the "premium" stuff. I think that's probably the smarter approach.:2 cents:

wouldn't people just start going to cnn for news instead? I have a feeling they aren't going to be one of the places that will be charging...

...not that cnn is perfect but what ever is? canoe.ca is as local as i ever get really and that is canada wide news.

Free does work as a business model. Subscriptions work as a business model. Hybrids work as a business model.

Most newspapers simply are not worth the price they try to charge online and will not make the transistion to subscription sales when their LOCAL (tv, radio) competition will give the information away for free.

It is much easier to work as a free model -- even the WSJ gives away almost all of it's content online for free to get traffic.

I hope it works.

I was in Sarasota Florida earlier this year, bought the Sunday paper for the classified ads.
Go to the home section only to find a notice to go to their web site for full listing. WTF? They basically said never buy our paper if you want to purchase something. Look on line for free instead.

They should stop whining and threatening and just get on with it already. They'll know soon enough if it's gonna work once it's implemented. I for one, definitely won't be paying for the crap that most newspapers are putting out.

I'll pay for journalism, but not for "news".

any article worth reading will be posted for free on message forums like GFY every morning and nothing will change....

:)

Yeah it'll hurt AD revenue. A flood of people will still end up at their god damned one paragraph teaser articles, and they'll get one impression.. but they will lose ALOT of people they could have made to click through several pages (and consequently several ad impressions)

The funny part would be to make them subscribe AND play ads with articles all spread into pages that way

LoL over here
Assholes

That doesn't work, that caused the crash in 2000. And now they are finding it doesn't pay that's why they are charging. They have more traffic than most would pray for and its not paying off.

They should block access to local users and let the national/international traffic unblocked.

Sure some will use proxies, but it would boost the revenues while keeping a good part of the ad revenues.

Lots of organisations have different business plans for different markets nowdays. eg : the ufc offers the event free online to UK users.

LOL. Free is not what caused the crash of 2000. Having no business plans, a stupid amount of investment money, and absolutely no plan at all as to how to make money was what caused the crash. Plenty of companies make plenty of money giving away stuff for free. Plenty of companies don't. It's a balancing act. Some can make it work, some cannot.

It always makes me chuckle to read these threads and see the opinions of pornographers and so called online 'business men' and 'experts' in regards to monetizing the internet.

Carry on.

:pimp

I think it's inevitable that all news providers will go to a subscription model at some point. Just a matter of how ugly the transition is going to be.

This is definitely a step in the right direction for online porn peddlers. IMO.

aside from tony having little clue about real business matters (its a compliment, tony has too much heart to cut it in this ruthless businessworld)

what would you do here, wise one?

They'lll pull some shit like the old syndex blackout rules or something.. Some places already sorta kinda do.

I tried to view something on espn360.com once, and it claimed since I wasn't on their "prefered provider" (or some such verbage) that I COULDNT get the feed for free (of course I closed it out at that point), but presumably if I'd been on their sweetheart provider, it'd be free. Jerks. Smart jerks.

and tony, you may think you see a parallel here between newspapers and adult, but the issue is not the content creation, its how cheap it has become to distribute

many people once thought their content was the moneymaker, but a large part of the value was actually the distribution of the content.

once the distribution of the content became cheap as sin, anybody can load some cheap dvd porn up for users and they are happy as a fiddle

For those that think it's a stupid move to start charging, answer me this?

The newspapers are already on-line for free and filled with ads and are still going bankrupt. What will change in the future to make them profitable using the free model? They are already doing exactly what you say, and they are going out of business. How do you explain that? How will staying on the same course suddenly start making them money?

Most people don't realize that on-line advertising is for the most part, worthless relative to other forms of advertising in regards to revenue for the publisher. In it's current form of banners and links it will never cover the cost of running an actual news bureau with offices and reporters around the world. You can run a scraper site that basically culls information from other sites or only makes short blog posts and be able to cover the costs with advertising. But not when you are the ones actually doing the legwork and writing the stories everyone else is just recycling and blogging about.

People who think free is the future believe they are ahead of the curve, but in fact, they are behind the times. They still can't see a digital product as a real product.

You're living in the past if you think there is a difference between a real product and a digital product.

probably!!!

I think the idea of selling yearly subscriptions and including an eReader like a Kindle with the deal would be a good way to jumpstart the newspaper industry.

of course both models assume there will be adequate subscribers and advertisers, which may not be the case for the next few years.

the newspaper model in any form will not survive most likely in the end.

Will fail, and one of the big reasons, is that most people will say to themselves "News is free on TV because of advertising. The web is like TV. So news on the web should be free too."

Wall Street Journal is a bad example to use for touting the success of paywalls, because often such subscriptions are paid for by companies, can be a tax deduction, and mainly because people are willing to pay a premium for detailed financial news, if they believe it will help them earn more money. Regular news doesn't have that appeal - for most folks, it's just entertainment; not worth paying for.

Unless CNN.com chooses to go along, which I doubt, this is a total non-starter. If CNN.com does go along, which I seriously doubt, then lots of free blogs will pop up with pirated news stories. Also many net savvy people will seek out foreign news sites, such as the BBC for U.S. / world news.

Ron

I think I'm the only person on earth that still gets a newspaper delivered to my house every day. I like having something to read that isn't on a computer screen.

There, I fixed it for you...:upsidedow

Actually I still get the USA Today delivered every day, and I have resisted canceling it because I still prefer to read something that I can hold in my hands. Then again, I still buy and read books and magazines, but that is mainly me being stubborn...

Don't confuse desperation with being savvy. Apparently Mr. Murdoch has already forgotten that the newspaper industry is dying because of free services like craigslist.

I get my local newspaper on Fridays ( $1.00 ) so I can see what's going on for the weekend locally and I get the Sunday paper ( $1.50 ) for sports and store flyers. I also like reading local news and what's going on in my community. To me that's worth paying for and something I can't get on cnn.com for free.

On the other hand all my local news like the snake eats baby Don't taz me bro Caylee Anthony crap ends up on cnn anyways so in the end all I really need for a news source is GFY :)

any smart business man knows that in order to make a decent amount of chump change you need to keep on re posting the same specials reworded to sound different on gfy. duh!

They are doing it thinking more people will pay to access the news.

Rather stupid business move... it's FAR easier to monetize from a free base than a forced subscription base that will always be limited.

well... unless TV news sites also start charging I don't see newspaper sites being that successful, nowadays u can get pretty much anything from msnbc (WSJ if u want something top notch), cnbc,fox (lulz),cnn and such sites and even if they wen't dark other news sites would emerge... the daily beast style..... and if those go dark we still have the onion! :)

I've been reading my news for free for years now. Why would anyone pay for that?

wheres the link to where ever the fuck you seen this?

i dont see many people paying..

Newspaper are a thing of the past... They do not deliver news in a timely manner, with the web it's up to the minute....They have outlived their worth..

Newspaper cartel. Love it!

Apparently you forgot that Murdoch also owns websites such as wsj.com, with number of visitors that quadrupled over the past 3 years and over 1 000 000 PAYING subscribers. Murdoch owned ft.com is also a huge money maker with it's hybrid model.

Financial news is a whole different animal. You can't even compare the two.

Try again.

yet another type of content to steal and give away for free.
so who will be the "pirate bay" of news?

Murdoch made it a whole different animal.

Financial newspapers were suppose to be the first victims, when you have 24hrs financial news channels, live streaming quotes, direct access through blogs and forum to tons of specialized advise who needs one day old stock quotes?

Yet Murdoch managed to use to power of the Wall Street Journal to create a fantastic media vehicle.

I am not a fan of the guy's political views but to dismiss him for "not remembering Craiglist" is a little ignorant :helpme

Good luck with that. People are used to free content and companies need to learn how to adapt.

why do i have a feeling that plan will go totally tits up

Yes, and probably hole "papers" on pirate sites daily. But you know, if that happens, it might be a good thing for fighting piracy. Some journalists are good investigators and they do have some power to change things :)

Well, what is the "adaption" really? Instead of feeded our brains with standard press releases, isn't it better to have journalists that work as watchdogs for our democracy? I am willing to pay for that.