In this time of radical change for newspapers, you’ll find lots of folk trying to make sense of it all – especially in the blogosphere. These writers are trying to interpret the signs of the media times and to recommend what we should do next. You can’t read them all, but when I see Steve Buttry’s byline attached to something, I always take time to check it out. I hope you will read the entire blog post at the URL above. Talking about the free vs. paid content issue, Steve notes that many people see the Original Sin of newspapers as not beginning to charge for online content from the get-go. But in a typical (for Steve) flash of insight, he notes that the Original Sin was on the ad side. Here’s a brief sample: “The disastrous error that newspapers made early in our digital lives was treating online advertising as a throw-in or upsell for their print advertisers. Helping businesses connect with customers was always our business. We were facing new technology and new opportunities and we did next to nothing to explore how we might use this new technology to help businesses connect with customers. We just offered businesses the same old solutions that we offered in print, but pop-up ads and web banners somehow didn’t work as well as display ads. Which was just as well, because we told our business customers the ads weren’t worth much by the way we treated them.” If you agree with what Buttry is saying, you will definitely want to make plans to attend our Internet ad sales workshop on Oct. 29 with Chuck Nau. Mark your calendars now and watch for more details on the website and in your inbox soon.
Author: Kathryn Jones Malone
Kathryn Jones Malone is co-director of the Texas Center for Community Journalism. She began her career as a staff writer at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, then worked as a staff writer for the Dallas Times Herald and The Dallas Morning News; as a contract writer for The New York Times; as a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly magazine; as editor of the Glen Rose Reporter; and as a freelance writer for numerous state, regional and national magazines. She teaches journalism at Tarleton State University.
During the last few months, we’ve seen more and more newspapers make plans to begin charging for online content — despite the lack of success most have had with paywalls. You may be considering the same thing. But before you do, take five minutes to read Michelle McLellan’s blog. She asks five questions that any newspaper should ask before it erects a paywall. This one’s worth your time.
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How newspapers must change
It’s not your father’s newspaper business any more. This business is changing as radically as the buggy whip business changed around the turn of the 20th century. One of our goals in the Around the Web service we provide is to share with you some of the innovative thinking out there related to the business we know and love. This article is one you should definitely read. You may not agree with all of it, but it’s a concept you should think about. Here’s a sample: “20th century news isn’t fit for 21st century society. Yesterday’s approaches to news are failing to educate, enlighten, or inform. The Fourth Estate has fallen into disrepair. It is the news industry itself that commoditized news by racing repeatedly to the bottom. It’s time for a better kind of news. A new generation of innovators is already building 21st century newspapers: nichepapers. The future of journalism arrived right under the industry’s nose.”
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Some useful stats for your ad reps
Here are some stats from NNA that may come in handy for your ad staff. Sorry not to be able to give you a URL on this, but the article I pulled them from is available only to subscribers.
- 41 percent of U.S. adults say newspapers are the medium they used most to check out ads. That’s more than radio, TV, Internet, magazines and catalogs combined.
- Even among those adults who did not read a paper last week, 36 percent — USED a newspaper. Of the non-readers, 19 percent checked sales and local stores, 15 percent clipped a coupon, 14 percent checked the weather, and 10 percent checked movie listings.
- 82 percent of U.S. adults used a preprinted insert in the last month. On average, adults keep inserts 3.8 days.
- 64 percent of U.S. adults prefer to receive coupons in newspapers. 22 percent prefer direct mail and 10 percent prefer the Internet.
- 60 percent of adults prefer to receive inserts in newspapers vs. 29 percent who prefer to get inserts in the mail.
- 80 percent of adults report looking at advertising while reading the paper.
Many of you are looking for different approaches to the online product. Check out this one from Columbia, Mo., a combination of a blog-like news stream with in-depth overview pages. Columbia Tomorrow lets members of the community start their own discussions on news posts. And check out the site’s video, which explains more about this project’s approach.
Here’s a site you need to check out, and print out for your ad staff. According to recent research, consumers trust advertising on local newspaper, magazine and television Websites, and are very likely to take action after viewing ads on these sites. It’s a piece any Texas ad rep needs in his/her pitch book when selling Internet ads.
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To charge or not to charge
So you’re wrestling with the issue of charging for your Internet product. Do you want to do it? If so, how much? And if you charge, do you charge everyone, or only those who don’t subscribe to your print edition? If that’s the discussion around your newsroom, you’re in pretty good company; The New York Times is talking about the same thing. This article will show you what the Times has come up with.
Peter Bakke in his blog makes a suggestion we’ve made in our seminars at TCU–that all community papers set up Google alerts for news tips and story ideas. Basically, all you need to do is to go to Google at http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ and click on Alerts. You tell Google that any time certain words or combinations of words show up on the Web that you want them to send you an email. Simple as that. You can set up alerts for the name of your community, for indivituals or organizations in town, etc. Here at the Center, we have an elert for “community journalism” (it needs to be in quotes, otherwise Google would alert us for all mentions of community and journalism). So every time any publication, or any obscure we-never-heard-of-it-before blog uses the phrase “community journalism,” we get an email. Google groups all mentions in a single email and sends it once a day. What Bakke suggests, and we haven’t considered before, is that ad reps use Google too — to find news of the primary industries you sell to, or news about your biggest clients. Bakke’s blog has an online tutorial about effective use of Google alerts.
Kevin Kelleher gives a good overview of the free-vs.-paid content argument, then presents his case that this is definitly the wrong time for newspapers to begin charging for online content. Here’s a sample of this thinking: “For the sake of argument, let’s say that news sites are routinely charging readers in five years. By then, the economy may be substantially healthier than now, and advertisers will be looking for sites with large, loyal readerships to sell their ads on. But that won’t include newspapers. They’ll be catering to that 10 percent of their online audience willing to subscribe. The rest of the Web will have long stopped linking to—and talking about—their stories. The dollars will flow right past the newspapers’ pay walls. And then they’ll really be sorry.”
Kevin Kelleher gives a good overview of the free-vs.-paid content argument, then presents his case that this is definitly the wrong time for newspapers to begin charging for online content. Here’s a sample of this thinking: “For the sake of argument, let’s say that news sites are routinely charging readers in five years. By then, the economy may be substantially healthier than now, and advertisers will be looking for sites with large, loyal readerships to sell their ads on. But that won’t include newspapers. They’ll be catering to that 10 percent of their online audience willing to subscribe. The rest of the Web will have long stopped linking to—and talking about—their stories. The dollars will flow right past the newspapers’ pay walls. And then they’ll really be sorry.”