A Sea Of Red

Hosting a training session for emergency personnel in the event of a train derailment. ANOTHER good example of how Liberty is an excellent partner with the city:

http://www.newsadvance.com/news/local/e ... f6878.html

*Note: The News and Advance now allows only 20 articles online to be read for free before requiring a subscription.

ATrain wrote:*Note: The News and Advance now allows only 20 articles online to be read for free before requiring a subscription.

This may be the bigger news. What? This shouldn't last long.

More and more newspapers are going this route. The crazy thing is it will cost you more for the online subscription only than for delivery plus online.

ALUmnus wrote:

ATrain wrote:*Note: The News and Advance now allows only 20 articles online to be read for free before requiring a subscription.

This may be the bigger news. What? This shouldn't last long.

I don't know, the Times-Dispatch did it earlier this year, and the Virginian-Pilot has also gone to this as well.

My parents are subscribers to the N&A print edition...they get an online subscription for free, and I'm assuming most of our board members in the Lynchburg area already get the print edition.

We're a business. We need to make money. If you just drop by for an article here and there, it doesn't affect you. If you read on a daily basis, you should have to pay something. We can't give our product away for free and expect to have enough revenue to operate.

You guys did a test run of that a couple of years ago, right?

We did, but that was under MG's management. Every BH paper is doing this, including Roanoke, Richmond and C'ville. I think it's the right model. If I pop in to read one story about Indiana State football, for instance, from the Terre Haute paper, getting a subscription seems ridiculous. But if I visit the N&A every day during football season, it's probably worth my while to put some coin down on it.

And the challenge for us is to make the online component worth your while, which is why I try to stay so active in that medium.

The Knox News is completely, 100% behind a pay wall.

Chris Lang wrote:We're a business. We need to make money.

Agreed. But I doubt this is the way to do it.

Not to sound harsh, but we won't lose sleep if the free readers stop reading for free, because they weren't helping our bottom line to begin with.

They should be. Most newspapers have moved to a web advertising model. Hard copy customers tend to be drains these days on the newspaper business. It costs more to print and deliver a paper than is gained back in sub revenues in all but the two days a week that circulars are delivered. Craigslist killed the newspaper business' cash cow in classified ads. And now your tax dollars are underwriting the death of newspaper's longtime stranglehold on circular advertising through the red ink of the US Postal Service. The newspaper business is going to have to get more creative in generating revenues to survive.

For the record, markets like Lynchburg are doing much better financially than larger markets where the financial squeeze has forced up to a 90% drop in revenue at many major papers. The dip in revenue has also hammered local radio & television. That's why shoestring budget outfits like Sinclair are surviving and buying up stations while traditional station groups are going bankrupt.

I just piggyback off my parents. They don't read the online content b/c they get and like the print stuff. I average about 2 articles a day on there.

But how often do you click on an ad on a newspaper's web page? I have ad blocker running in Firefox and don't see them, so they're a non factor. Everyone in the news biz is still trying to figure out the right answer to the question, but I don't see any way that putting the same product that we try to sell in the newsstands online for absolutely free is that answer. Newspapers made a horrible decision early on with that model, and we're still trying to right that ship.

Chris Lang wrote:Newspapers made a horrible decision early on with that model, and we're still trying to right that ship.

The same thing happens with any technology, there is a learning curve before a return to stability. That said, it will be interesting to see how "new media" responds to "traditional media's" correction.

Instead of a correction it could be argued that we are dealing with a new paradigm. Newspapers are no longer just competing with local television and radio for a piece of the advertising pie in a certain market. The pie is now sliced up into a million pieces. The Lynchburg paper's primary competitors are not other newspapers. Their competitors are any media outlets vying to be the primary news portal in Central Virginia. It also explains why so many papers are ditching their century-old identities to come up with new branding on the web. Those who stick to traditional business models will likely find themselves out of business.

For the record, I believe the worst of the impact has already been felt in the newspaper industry. Local broadcasters were hit later but now are only halfway through this ugly cycle.

Chris Lang wrote:But how often do you click on an ad on a newspaper's web page? I have ad blocker running in Firefox and don't see them, so they're a non factor. Everyone in the news biz is still trying to figure out the right answer to the question, but I don't see any way that putting the same product that we try to sell in the newsstands online for absolutely free is that answer. Newspapers made a horrible decision early on with that model, and we're still trying to right that ship.

Never have, likely never will. I also never called an advertiser in the newspaper either. Likely never will do that either. I take recommendations from friends/family, use Google, etc...

I have an inherent distrust of any online advertising. I just assumed most other people did as well. That's why it amazes me that online advertising is so lucrative.

The hyperlocal nature of online advertising is what makes it so attractive to advertisers. Why would a car dealership in Appomattox pay to advertise on local TV stations that cover the entire Roanoke/Lynchburg market? They know that no one in Blacksburg is driving all the way to Appomattox to buy a car from them. So why not just pay to reach those with whom there is a reasonable chance of interest in buying a car at your business? That is the new standard for advertising. Those who learn how to leverage the changes are those that will survive.

As for the success of online advertising, our school is probably one of the better success stories you can find. But I agree that it is primarily about brand awareness more than click to buy for most consumers.

Chris Lang wrote:Not to sound harsh, but we won't lose sleep if the free readers stop reading for free, because they weren't helping our bottom line to begin with.

I agree with you. I'm a casual clicker but not as much anymore since I have no vested interest in HS sports. I do click on your blog though.

This thread has "derailed." But on that note, the newspaper challenge is an interesting one. Unfortunately, users have become used to free content from newspapers on the web over the years. There have been many experiments with paywalls since the reality struck in but it seems the best way to do it is allow limited access for free and premium access to subscribers.

Back in California i knew many in the newspaper industry and one of the biggest mistakes they made in understanding the online world was assuming that online readers were freeloaders. First of all, business online is much more complicated. There are many websites that thrive online with no subscription fee. The challenge is that unless you are the New York Times or WSJ you are only broadcasting to a local audience, which makes online ad revenue more of a challenge for a business like N&R. The other issue (elephant in the room) is that many successful online sites are able to operate with very little infrastructure compared to a business that is printing out papers as well. In the future, I think there will be even more consolidation in traditional newsprint in order to save production costs.

Anyways, to assume that people who are visiting the site are adding nothing to the bottom line speaks more of the paper's online business plan than of the users that go there. I probably visit the N&R site once a week or so and have clicked on some of the advertising links, since they were targeted for me. If N&R is giving those ads away for free and don't get anything for me clicking on them, that's a marketing/advertising problem.

The time when things like this are most successful is when you are able to increase the value of the product while charging a fee. This will help convince the consumer that they aren't paying for the same thing they used to get free. If value is added, it may be an easier pill to swallow.

I was good friends with the publisher and several editors of a paper out in California. A few years ago, they were mandated to put up a paywall by the owner. When this happened, their comment section went from 100+ comments on big stories to 0. Sharing of their stories on Facebook went from a common occurrence to never. I don't know what their online numbers looked like but as someone who had access I can say that it appeared they weren't getting much volume at all. After about a year and a half they had to move to a freemium model where everyone had free limited access and you had to subscribe for continued, regular access. I believe they kept some things like emergency stories and obituaries free for everyone. Once they adopted this model, they started to see an increase in online traffic again.

From talking with local business owners etc, the paywall made them less willing to buy online advertising because they knew that traffic had gone down and rates weren't being lowered to reflect this. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Hope all goes well for N&R.

Freemium seems to be the way to go. Have to give people some stuff for free. If not, how will they know if the "paper" puts out a product worth paying for? Been to several sites that have put everything behind the paywall, not even a a one or two paragraph preview of any sort, and I have no clue if the site is worth paying for. Of course, I never go back because there's nothing there for me. They may have gotten my money if they would have let me see nothing, alas they get none of my money. I know I can't be the only person out there that thinks like this.

It is an option in smaller markets. In bigger markets, there are too many content sources to ever close things off.