The blog post below, from the Suburban Newspaper Association of America, unintentionally offers the perfect illustration of the illogical thinking of many publications in regards to pay walls on web sites. On one hand, the author, Deb Shaw, points out that newspapers are the primary initiators of local content and that other mediums, including citizen-written efforts and blogs are ill equipped to displace newspapers in this role. On the other hand, the author ominously quotes a survey showing that most Americans want their news for free and would search elsewhere for content if it was not given away free by publications.
Search where? If local newspapers are not writing it, readers can search all they want, it won't exist. I want a new car to be free but no matter how many auto dealers I go to the darn things still cost money. Besides, am I missing something, hasn't the last 10 years taught publications that the cost of creating content and distributing it free on websites outweighs the revenue that can be generated by online ads of any form? On some level it is supply and demand- online advertisers are buying traffic and there are so many online opportunities that supply online has far outstripped demand, thereby deflating ad rates and that will make it tough for originally produced free content to be paid for entirely by paid advertising anytime in the near future.
If you disagree with me and want to read more of the "give-it-away-free-because-someday-traffic-will-result-in-revenue" philosophy go to the SNA's website, here.
By Deb Shaw
Editor, Suburban Publisher
While the news media industry has spent the last few years reeling from
the financial
pitfalls of the economic meltdown, declining readership and plummeting
advertising
revenues, small dailies and community weeklies have proved profitable,
and are,
increasingly, the dominant source for local coverage.
So concludes The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in
Journalism’s State
of the News Media 2010 report, covering two areas that are of particular
interest
to SNA members — Newspapers and Online.
As expected, the report reveals the challenging economic state of the
newspaper
industry, and paints a stark picture of the woeful economic realities at
many metro
newspapers. However, it points out that smaller, suburban and community
newspapers
are faring much better economically.
“The problems are not uniform across the industry. Big-city papers
continue to have
the worst of it in these difficult times. Small dailies and community
weeklies,
with the exception of some that are badly positioned or badly managed,
still do
better. The latter come closer to the late-20th century position of
newspapers as
the dominant source for local information and the place for local
merchants to advertiseAnother noteworthy finding relates to online news consumption and pay
walls. Any
publisher thinking of erecting a pay wall should consider that,
according to the
report, just 7% of Americans express any willingness to pay for news
content. Instead,
large majorities said they would look for content elsewhere if their
favorite site
put up a pay wall.
In addition, the report addresses social media (now firmly established
as part of
the media ecosystem), citizen news sites (most are not in a position to
take on
the job of traditional news outlets), blogging (it’s declining) and user
habits
relative to news consumption (we’ve become grazers — on a typical day,
nearly
half of Americans now get news from four to six different platforms).
The entire report is available, free of charge, at www.stateofthemedia.org