NYT: Can Newspapers End the Free Ride Online?

[DeepModem Mom]

Can Papers End the Free Ride Online?
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: March 14, 2005


Consumers are willing to spend millions of dollars on the Web when it comes to music services like iTunes and gaming sites like Xbox Live. But when it comes to online news, they are happy to read it but loath to pay for it.

Newspaper Web sites have been so popular that at some newspapers, including The New York Times, the number of people who read the paper online now surpasses the number who buy the print edition.

This migration of readers is beginning to transform the newspaper industry. Advertising revenue from online sites is booming and, while it accounts for only 2 percent or 3 percent of most newspapers' overall revenues, it is the fastest-growing source of revenue. And newspaper executives are watching anxiously as the number of online readers grows while the number of print readers declines....

***

As a result, nearly a decade after newspapers began building and showcasing their Web sites, one of the most vexing questions in newspaper economics endures: should publishers charge for Web news, knowing that they may drive readers away and into the arms of the competition?...Of the nation's 1,456 daily newspapers, only one national paper, The Wall Street Journal, which is published by Dow Jones & Company, and about 40 small dailies charge readers to use their Web sites....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/14/business/media/14paper.html?pagewanted=all&position=

[Bush_Blows]

1. I hope not!

No way that would be useful to me.

[bpilgrim]

2. can newspapers COMPETE with the INTERNETs? is the REAL question...

Hell NO!

http://images.globalfreepress.com

peace

[President Jesus]

11. don't you find it ironic...

...that you declare newspapers unable to compete (and compete with what, btw?) while posting a newspaper cartoon to corroborate your point?

All bloggers do is comment on what is reported in newspapers, so it's kinda hard to say they are the new wave of journalism. New wave of pundits, maybe.

[bpilgrim]

21. bloggers comment on world events... a few american newspapers don't

hold a monopoly on current events.

and it is not JUST what is reported in the newspapers, either.

and they are certainly news analyst with much better sourcing and fact based analysis instead of the slanted conventional wisdom put forth by the elite.

the only irony i see is that NEWSpapers think they will improve their bottom line by become more closed source.

thank GORE he 'invented' the INTERNETs ;->

:hi:

peace

[President Jesus]

27. and bloggers aren't slanted?

If your gripe with the media 'elite' is that they are slanted, how is it you find comfort in getting your information solely from bloggers. I have not yet seen a blog that does not have an outright agenda behind it.

No, bloggers are not journalists. They are pundits. Hopefully they will render obsolete all the inane talking-head 'experts' that appear on tv. But they are not going to take down the AP, Reuters, or the news networks.

[bpilgrim]

31. i didn't say they weren't

i said they had much better sources and came to conclusions that made sense then the elite.

peace

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. But as well as better sources, they have worse ones

The problems with blogs is knowing which ones are truthful. There are plenty of blogs that are way more biased than Fox News. The advantage of the established media is that they have to maintain a reputation for something approaching the truth to keep their business going. Only when blogs stand to lose lots of money if they misreport things will the worst of them drop out.

[bpilgrim]

36. got get a variety, as always

that's why DU is so valuable, we got sources from all over the globe.

and the analysis is from the peoples perspective vs the mans perspective.

the media are just now realizing they are the butt of the joke these days.


http://news.globalfreepress.com

peace

[leesa]

38. True. I wouldn't purchase NYT online or off. They are doing a poor job.

[FloridaPat]

3. If it's a choice between NYT and DU, DU wins. I won't pay for propaganda.

If I want to read or listen to government lies, I'll watch TV.

[against all enemies]

32. DU has it's place but I don't see any investigating reporting. Say

what you will about the Times but it does do some of the best reporting out there. Numerous times revealing reports about the government done by the Times are posted here for comment. Do you really think we would be better off without them?

[bpilgrim]

34. pfft... BBV, GANNON, AWOL, IRAQ, etc

you gotta get out of the lounge to see the good stuff :evilgrin:

and yes, i think we would be better off without them in fact i know so because i cancled all my subscriptions even cable teeVee and am now more informed then anyone i know cept other DU'ers about current events, international or domestic.

we get much better reporting from abroad then at home.

hopefully the M$MW will take the hint and change their ways.


http://images.globalfreepress.com

peace

[0007]

37. I wouldn't say the best, but it does have its place in this ever

fast pace of changing times.

Would you ever find this in the New York Times in one shot?

News & Analysis
------------------------------------------
Pentagon plans rendition of Guantánamo prisoners
Detainees face torture in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Yemen
https://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/guan-14m.shtml

Western Australian election: Labor returned to office with help from the media
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/elec-m14.shtml

Deregulation leads to Britain's largest ever food recall
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/food-m14.shtml

Book Review
-----------------------------------------
Military interference in American film production
Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon shapes and censors the movies by David L. Robb
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/holl-m14.shtml

Correspondence
-----------------------------------------
Letters from our readers
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/mar2005/corr-m14.shtml

[FloridaPat]

39. There is no more investigating reporting in America according to

Greg Palast. There is more investigations here because people find news stories from all over the world and TV and report it. Sometimes they connect the dots and other times others connect the dots. There is just too much propaganda in the mainstream news to believe any of it.

[WhiteTara]

41. problem is that DU gets its info FROM newspapers

so it is very much symbiotic.

[rooboy]

4. Pay for Judith Miller? Screw that. n/t

[Lori Price CLG]

20. Yeah, the Bush regime pays for her...

...so why does anyone *else* have to? LOL!

Lori Price

[Enquiringkitty]

5. Let them charge. They will see the number of hits and log-ons drop.

Blogs like ours can help pay for one person to get the web page then that person can post on the blog what is important to DU. I would help one of you pay for the web so thousand of us can get the news. I don't buy news papers anyway. I scan the national and international sections at the library.

[bpilgrim]

12. BugMeNot.com

http://bugmenot.com

got us all covered ;->

peace

[autorank]

6. Hey, newspaper guys. Online saves you money, no paper, no distribution

costs. These guys can go eff themselves if they want to charge for reducing their costs and adding value. They can charge for database searches or value added services. Besides, I'm going with the blog press service product whenever that materializes.

Who would pay for a paper like the NYT which used a hack reporter (although she did start at a Pacifica station) Judith Miller to start a tragic war based on unsubstantiated, self serving "facts" as told by one source, a man subsequently charges with treason by the perpetrators of the war.

[President Jesus]

17. um, $15 million in online revenue is not quite enough to fund a

$150 million news operation.

The fact still reamains that one full page print ad in the Times brings in more revenue than their website will make all day long. And there are a lot of those full page ads.

[Trillo]

22. Isn't it curious that if a private party wishes to buy that page,

the words ADVERTISEMENT is plastered on it somewhere; but, if the government decides to release some propaganda, a whole page may be devoted to that view, but no sign of ADVERTISEMENT is visible?

[Scout Finch]

7. Who could afford it?

I read many news articles from several newspapers a day on line. If I had to pay a fee to each newspaper, it would exceed my cable internet bill.

Paying for a hard copy of a newspaper is fair and understandable. Paying to read a particular on line article is not.

Having said that, look for newspapers to charge a *small* fee for each article you click on. It's not enough that they make a profit from on line ads in their articles. When they start charging, I stop reading them.

[Dickie Flatt]

15. Exactly

When people pay for XBox Live, that's probably the only (or one of a very few) online gaming services they're paying for.

But I read articles from dozens, perhaps hundreds, of newspapers online. How can I pay for that? I can't afford a subscription to every newspaper in the country. Would they rather get absolutely nothing from me than whatever tiny bit of money they get from banner ads, spam, and popups?

If they want to screw around like this, I'll just get all the articles for free from my library's home access newspaper archive service. It's less convenient, but it is absolutely free.

[MADem]

28. Hell, everyone will go to Lexis Nexus....

You can get it all there--if you have to pay, pay for the wide swath, not a narrow stripe. And you know damn well people will start "fair using" and cutting and pasting HUGE amounts of text all over the web. Four paragraph limit? You post four, I'll post four, and the next one in line will post four....if there's a constrictive system, there's always a work-around.

These bastards in the newspaper game need to get a friken grip. They pull in PLENTY from the ads that people have to suffer through alongside their text, and they reduce their costs, which include having to get the paper from the supplier, run the presses, and distribute the hard copies of the papers. They actually do better ONLINE than in print, where the margins are very small and rely totally on stated circulation (and they LIE to their advertisers about their print circ, and the advertisers are catching on--this is why they are pulling this trial balloon out).

Here's a concept--PUT REAL NEWS IN THE PAPER. Increase your circulation, stop playing PRAVDA WEST, and give us some hard hitting news. They won't be able to print them fast enough if that happens, and the hits on their websites will bring in those fast pennies that will translate to hefty dollars faster than they can say Bob's yer uncle!

[SoCalDem]

25. Some little WEEKLY in Wyoming charges $7 a month to view online

I wrote them an email telling them that they were NUTS if they thought I would pay that much to look at their site:)

[AP]

8. They'd be handing over control of the mediation of media to bloggers

so I think they'd never do it.

If you went to a blogger to get the spin on the spin, then the Times and the Post wouldn't be able to spin as effectively, and I think 70% of the Time's profit power is in mediation of the message rather than in reporting the truth.

[high density]

9. Probably not

I know of a local online news source that went paid subscriber-only for a while, but after about six months they gave up that business model and went back to free access.

[Massacure]

10. Online ads should provide enough revenue for websites.

50 cents per thousand views times a million viewers who each read 10 articles. That is $5,000 a day. Plus they can have more than one ad on a page.

[bluestateguy]

13. Copy and Paste is a beautiful thing

They can't do it.

[yorkiemommie1]

14. i have weekend only service for two newspapers

the local one is closing its printing facility and sending its work to a non union printshop. it's a copley, bush backing, arnie backing paper but a lot of good people are going to lose their jobs.

[stillcool]

16. Maybe instead of paying the newspapers.....

we could pay the reporters directly....somehow...

[bemildred]

18. It's a trade off.

If you charge you limit viewers; so they gotta decide if they
want to serve a select audience that will pay, or they want to be
an effective state propaganda organ with a wide readership.

They are whining because they don't have the captive audience
online that they do in print or on television. Tough shit.

Edit: Everybody likes comptetition as long as it isn't them that
has to compete.

[jayctravis]

19. Way to fix this:

Delay the news articles online by one week. Then the web version would be a valuable archival resource. If you want the current news articles immediately you either buy the real paper or pay, say $5 for a week of online access. Non recurring payment; if you don't read the daily news, you don't pay for it.

Perhaps even show the top half of the front page daily for free, same as in a newspaper machine, as a preview.

Edited: Sell a DVD multimedia version of the entire year with full pictures and advertising.

[w4rma]

23. They'd still be giving up their mediation to blogger pundits. (nt)

[w4rma]

24. Personally, I think that advertisers are getting a steal of a deal online

online advertisements are cheaper for the number of people that see them than print and TV advertisements. I think they should raise their rates, some.

[depakid]

26. Until the papers stop LYING and transparently slanting

their coverage, I wouldn't pay a nickle for them.

I don't need copy that says "Bush claims earth is flat... opinions vary."

Other people feel the same way- look what happened to the LA Time's circulation numbers and ad revenues when the Tribune took over and marched to right!

The bottom line is that is if you produce a shitty product, people aren't going to buy it. If they charge online- very few are going to pay for it.

If publishers really want to increase readership and circulation- they'd be wise to read Laurie Garrett's resignation memo and act accordingly-

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000819198

[booksenkatz]

29. I cancelled my subscription to the Detroit Free Press 3 yrs ago

It is allegedly a lefty paper, but it got so full of rightard crap, it was a waste of money, time and space. I find that I'm much better informed by getting my information online from a variety of sources (lefty and not particularly lefty). I still check in at the Free Press website to keep up with local news, but I no longer see any purpose in subscribing to one newspaper -- you tend to spend too much time rifling through the entire thing just to make it worth your subscription money. I'd rather spend that time online!

[bklyncowgirl]

30. This doesn't sound good does it. Guess this is a warning shot.

I read the Times online because it's quicker and easier.

Now I'm a librarian so I have free newspapers on my job and as a librarian needs to be well informed, a perfect excuse for reading them at work. Moreover, my library subscribes to Proquest's New York Times which has the full content of the paper going back to the 1850s online in PDF format. Anyone with a library card can just sit home and read any article they want at home in their underwear with a beer in their hands.

This seems short-sighted to me. They're getting more people to view their ads (and this is what this is all about) on the Internet than would have ever subscribed to their newspaper--especially people from outside of the New York area. Yeah it must be galling to know that people are getting it for free but I'm sure that the number of people who've stopped buying the hardcopy are not that huge. I mean most people aren't going to browse the website on the subway are they?

[Catchawave]

33. You can access some of the major papers and wires for free

and without subscribing at

http://news.yahoo.com/

Sort of redundant for the newsies to start charging. Just more of these Yahoo type services will be created.

[kineneb]

40. I wouldn't subscribe to a US paper online.

I might go for Asia Times, Der Spiegel and the Guardian, but I find little of value in the US press. My chicken thinks they make fine nesting material.

[MrModerate]

42. I pay for Salon, because I want professional journalism . . .

That is reasonably in line with my beliefs, and consequently provides an article mix I'm likely to be interested in. (And they have whizzy downloads, etc., etc.)

I pay for New York Review of Books, which gives me thoughtful, in-depth articles (often actual multibook reviews, believe it or not) with a slightly lefty stance.

I hit CNN for the headlines (and links to middleroad Time and SI) -- I'd stop going in a nanosecond if they changed their policy and started charging; I hit WashPo for their editorials -- I wouldn't pay; I get the LA and NY Times newsletters that let me hit the top 6 or 8 stories, and so far they're not asking for pay.

And I troll of lot of blogs and near-blogs.

If this picture shifts, I'm unlikely to pick up more pay sites. Micropayments are worse, and going to the Bumfuque, Ark, "Register and Ledger" and being asked for a 5-buck-a-week subscription is just preposterous.

What I DO miss is MediaWhoresOnline, which was one of the best second-generation blogs in 2003 and early 2004 -- shrill, snarky, and merciless -- but the author(s) burned themselves out and they disappeared.

[Redstone]

43. One aspect nobody's mentioned...

is the fact that the newspapers have to pay non-staffers an additional fee for reprinting their work in the online edition. (This went, I think, all the way to the Supreme Court a couple of years ago as a challenge to the "work for hire" principle that many publications sleazily try to force on freelanceers.)

So, if there's justice (though probably not), if the newspapers were able to charge for access to the online version, they might print restaurant reviews and similar stuff that they don't print now because they don't want to pay the authors the additional fees for content that they are distributing for free.

No, I doubt they'll understand that they could increase the chances of people paying to see the web version by saying "OK, we want to charge you for access, but look at all the sufff you'll get that you can't get now."

Also something to consider, just to be fair to the newspapers: The people who do the Web versions of the papers don't work for free. Is it fair for the print subscribers to shoulder this additional cost, just so others can see the paper online for free?

The last paragraph is just an opinion. No flames from the "information wants to be free" crowd will be answered.

Redston.

[AP]

44. That's no longer an issue because papers get an assignment of internet...

...rights now.

The court case was relevant for works purchased before there was an internet and with contracts without an "all rights in all media, existing and foreseeable..." sort of clause.

You can bet that going forward from about '98 any newspaper run by adults gets an assignement of the rights they need for internet and print publication without having to pay additional royalties (unless the author has more bargaining power than the publisher)