Check out this article in PaidContent. It surveys some newspapers who are charging for online content, including the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen. Here’s a quote: “The newspapers tend to be located in smaller, often rural markets; online-only subscriptions are typically priced at a substantial discount to the print edition (in general, about 75 percent of what the print product costs); where numbers are available, the number of online subscribers is still a tiny percentage of their print counterparts (less than 5 percent); and many of these papers say they began charging not so much to make money online, but rather to protect sales of their print editions.”
In less than a year, M.E. Sprengelmeyer has gone from being the Washington correspondent at the Rocky Mountain News — covering everything from 9/11 to the war in Iraq — to owning a community newspaper in a small New Mexico town. He writes about his experience on the Save the News blog, and about his optimism about the state of community journalism. “Think of a community newspaper as a bronze statue in the town square,” he writes. “Everybody in town can look up and see that it’s there.”
Successful managers are always looking for ideas. And sometimes, they find great ideas in articles – or from people – that they don’t always agree with. That’s why I want you to read Steve Outing’s piece on making online profits. There may be some things that don’t apply to you; there may be things you don’t think you can do right now; and there may be a few things you just disagree with you. But Steve gives 12 ideas, and I’ll bet that there are one or two that will work for you. It’s worth checking out.
Most definitely. It is called conflict of interest.
Editors of both large and small papers are often confronted with this dilemma. Louis Day, in his textbook Ethics in Media Communications, defines a conflict of interest as a “clash between professional loyalties and outside interests.”
In this case, the clash would be between your responsibilities as a city council member vs. your professional loyalties as a journalists. A fundamental duty of a journalists is to be an observers of events instead of participants.
In your case you would have the ultimate responsibility of the coverage of your city council. As a city council member, you would be acting on issues that have impact your community.
I think it is almost impossible to completely separate the two duties — there will come a time when your action as a city councilman will influence how you cover a story. None of us are totally objective creatures.
A what, you ask? My newspaper needs a Facebook strategy? Yes, you do. And the fact that you do is symptomatic of the changes that are engulfing today’s community journalism. This article will take only a few minutes to read, but it overviews the issue, including some ideas on monetizing your Facebook presence.
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.
If you’ve been to one of our Web workshops you’ve probably heard us talk about the Flip camera. It’s an easy-to-use, point-and-shoot video camera that we’ve recommended for those who want to get started with digital video.
Now we have one (a Flip Ultra, worth $149), and we want to give it to you, the community journalists who take advantage of our online services.
To be eligible to win this all you have to do is be a registered user of this site, and a subscriber to our e-mail newsletter.
If you’re not registered yet, just point your browser to /user/register and sign up. Make sure you leave the box checked for “Subscribe to Weekly update from the Digital Initiative” so you’re eligible for the Flip camera giveaway.
You’ll be entered into the contest additional times if you’re also our follower on Twitter (our username is @tccj) or a fan of our page on Facebook (just search for Texas Center for Community Journalism) so if you aren’t registered on either of those sites, this could be a great time to do so.
We’ll select the winner on September 21st, so sign up by then to be eligible.
This is only open to individual journalists (so you can’t register under your newspaper’s name), and you have to live in the U.S.
Good luck.
Here’s a statistic to share with your advertisers: Newspapers are still the main medium that influences the buying decisions of 59% of adults. That’s according to data released by NAA, which contain a wealth of interesting stats about how newspapers readers are affected by advertising. The first link, to MediaPost, has some analysis with the highlights of the data. The second link is to a news release on NAA’s site with the numbers.
A story in the NYT looks at how many are starting their day online, which could mean an even further decrease in the amount of time people have to read the paper in the morning. “It used to be you woke up, went to the bathroom, maybe brushed your teeth and picked up the newspaper,” Naomi S. Baron, a professor at American University told the NYT. “But what we do first now has changed dramatically.” The story uses Web traffic patterns and anecdotal accounts to discuss the phenomenon, which is likely already affecting how many consume their news.
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.