Paying to read the newspaper online?

In what may prove the next step toward trying to make some money online, newspapers are eyeing the possibility of making readers pay to read their content on the web.
The latest to give it a shot is the Journal Inquirer, our east-of-the-river brethren, which announced its intentions here.
The JI is not charging its print subscribers to read it online, but is developing some way to make people who are not buying the paper shell out something to eyeball much of its stuff via the internet.
Whether that'll work or not, I have no idea.
But don't be surprised if The Bristol Press makes a similar decision. Following the JI's lead is not a bad strategy for both making money and making a difference.
My suggestion for one and all is to subscribe to the Press. That's what pays my less than breathtaking salary and that's what makes it possible for us to get out there and report the news.

Update on Friday, April 17th -- Apparently, the JI's experiment is going pretty well. They're providing full access to the paper's website for subscribers. Those who don't subscribe can pay the $154 it would have cost them to get the paper for a year -- and if they don't want the dead tree version, they can simply donate the hard copy to the Newspapers in Education program.

What's interesting to me is that some of the new subscribers are from out of the area, presumably retirees who have moved to sunnier climes or just refugees from Connecticut who want to make a living somewhere. Those folks are a new market for the paper, which otherwise had no reasonable way to make any money off of them.

If the JI continues to see this as successful, you can bet your bottom dollar that The Bristol Press won't be the only other daily in Connecticut to give it a try as well. But I trust we'll upgrade our website first!

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

Time's "How to Save Your Newspaper" cover piece

Grab a copy of next week's Time magazine -- out there now -- and read Walter Isaacson's cover story. What do you think of his idea?

Update: What Isaacson proposes isn't a new idea, but this kind of prominent push always helps. He argues that newspapers have more readers than ever, but more and more of them are reading stories for free online, which doesn't help pay the tab to run the papers.  Isaacson says the way to change the dynamic is to create a micropay system online where readers fork over a nickel or something for every story they read. It would add up.

It's pretty much the same idea that got forced on the music industry as iPods took over and made it so people got used to shelling out 99 cents a tune instead of downloading them for free from shadier sources.

There are no shady sources for news stories -- well, not many -- but we haven't found a way yet to make newspaper websites pay their freight. Perhaps Isaacson's push is what we need to do it.

I'd like to think a fair number of people would pay a few pennies to read what I write. Heck, some might even pay a dime.

In any case, I do think that journalism will be better for it if readers pay a good portion of the cost of getting news because the only obvious alternative is for advertisers to do it. And you'd have to live in la-la land to think that over time advertisers wouldn't come to rule the roost, undermining the credibility of what little journalism remains.

Anyway, let's see the issue dealt with. We need to do something different or the only thing the future holds is ... nothing.

Another update:

I've been thinking of the economics here.

Including the cost of benefits and the raise I'm sure will be coming my way soon, I make about $1,000 per week (though I certainly never see that much, unfortunately). Now suppose that I write 12 stories per week on average. To cover my entire salary, each story would need to bring in about $83 on average. At a nickel a read, that means 1,670 or so people would need to be willing to chip in a nickel to pay me for each story.

And that leaves nothing to pay for the building, utilities, other people who are critical to the enterprise, or any profits at all. Advertising, though, ought to be able to cover some of the tab, even if it's all online.

Still, we're a long way from having a couple thousand people or more paying a nickel or more per story to keep me employed and The Bristol Press pumping out news each day.

To do this would take a massive, national and coordinated response from the newspaper business. While I'd like to think the folks who are in a position to make the deals and make it happen would bother, I'm not too impressed with the leadership shown by America newspaper companies, since they've mostly been leading us over a cliff. I'm deeply skeptical.

On the other hand, perhaps they'll hire Isaacson to lead up the effort and they'll all pull together to make this happen. It holds promise, which is more than  you can say for doing the same old thing as one paper after another folds.

If this business is doomed, let's at least sink with our arms flailing instead of just holding our noses and treading water until we inevitably slip away.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

The ongoing debate about online newspapers

For those who are paying attention to the online journalism debate fostered in part by the looming closure of The Bristol Press, be sure to read Aldon Hynes' latest thoughts in The Future of the Newspaper, Part 2.
As he rightly points out, I am more skeptical than he is about the prospects for an online paper. But I also see that an online paper is a hell of a lot better than no paper at all.
What bothers me most about going online only is that it will leave out many, perhaps most, of our older readers, the folks who have read the Press their whole lives, the very people who have been most loyal to the newspaper and who most deserve to continue to have access to the news. I suppose some kind of arrangement with public access television might help fill that part of the gap, as he mentions. I hadn't thought of that.
There's been a little talk of running the paper online as some sort of student journalism project, which is interesting. But I have to say, as someone who has taught journalism to teens for 15 years with great success (see ReadTheTattoo.com), that it would require patient, experienced hands to function even reasonably well. Students' work needs a lot of editing.
I have no doubt that someday online papers will make serious money, if not the riches that daily newspapers used to produce, but getting from here to there is going to be a trick.
Personally, I think the only way it's going to happen in the near term is if Google decides to fund local journalism. It's made gazillions of dollars organizing information produced by others. If it's going to keep moving forward, it needs to shell out the money to produce, and own, some of that information. It has the cash to ensure journalism continues in this country -- and that information about what's happening in communities across the nation (and ultimately across the globe) is written up by professionals so that it is useful to others.
Hey Google Guys, why not fund a nonprofit newspaper right here in Central Connecticut to see how it works out? It would cost you less than a rounding error and we'd all know in a few years whether nonprofit online newspapers are a stupid idea or a great one.
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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com

More thoughts on online newspapers

If you care, take a look at Aldon Hynes's piece on The Future of the Newspaper. It's bullish on the online future of journalism. I wish I could be as optimistic as he is.

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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com