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Should you offer your print newspaper subscription for free?

Newspapers today generally offer two products: they offer an online product and they offer a print product. These products are different in some very basic but inconspicuous ways, which is why a lot of papers are still trying to shoehorn their print product into their digital offering; they haven’t figured out how important those little changes are.

The print product is becoming less and less viable. The online product is growing at ridiculous rates, even during the current economic downturn.

Newspapers need to start accepting the fact that their online product is their primary service. There’s a reason that 50% of your web traffic comes from Google: search is a web dashboard, your home page is a print dashboard.

So what do you do? You start treating your print product as a marketing tool for your online product.

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July 3, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 4 Comments 

Knowledge is worth money, information is not

I recently started reading Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody, which is one of the best books I’ve read this year. I’ve been really impressed with how well Shirky understands the shifts that are happening in publishing and media and organizations because of the internet.

So you can imagine how far my jaw dropped when I realized that he wrote, essentially, an early draft of his book in mailing list messages in 2002 and 2003.

I really liked this one in particular, which talks about the stupidity of micropayments and, essentially, the stupidity of anyone trying to charge for content on the internet.

Shirky argues that micropayments, or charges of any kind, create a barrier:

Though each piece of written material is unique, the universe of possible choices for any given reader is so vast that uniqueness is not a rare quality. Thus any barrier to a particular piece of content (even, as the usability people will tell you, making it one click further away) will deflect at least some potential readers.

Shirky is 100% right about news and entertainment. This type of content is easily substituted. If the Wall Street Journal is charging me to read about “the company formerly known as” Bear Stearns, I will get my coverage for free from the New York Times.

But information that creates knowledge is still worth money. If I need to learn how to do a particular magic trick, it’s worth $10 for me to buy the instructions instead of hunting around the dregs of the internet, hoping to piece it together.

In other words, the price of education is still high.

This doesn’t really apply to newspapers unless you think of it as a possibility for membership services. For example, a a paying member at the Seattle P-I might be able to sign in for a weekly webinar on pet care, or cooking, or computer assistance, or practically anything that imparts knowledge (since knowledge is different than information).

June 21, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 1 Comment 

Should journalists be required to identify themselves?

In this past Sunday’s New York Times, Jacques Steinberg wrote about the resurfacing of an old issue in journalism: should reporters be required to identify themselves to the sources they talk to?

In particular the article discusses Mayhill Fowler, who writes for the Huffington Post and is most notable as the source for the following recent political hot topics:

  1. Bill Clinton calling the author of a recent Vanity Fair article “sleazy” and “dishonest.”
  2. Obama claiming that some people cling to guns and religion out of bitterness.

In both of these cases Fowler did not identify herself as a journalist, and Obama’s quote came from an event to which the media were not invited.

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June 11, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | Leave a Comment 

What is a widget and why should newspapers care?

I wrote a post the other day about thinking beyond text and images with online journalism. Looking back, I sound a little bit grandiose while talking about something that some newspapers are already excelling at.

The New York Times‘ rent or buy real estate calculator is one example that I’ve been aware of for some time.

Right now, there’s an interactive graphic on the New York Times home page that elegantly displays the breakdown of various voter blocks in the democratic primary. Want to know how women in their 30’s voted by state? Click. Cool.

What I should be able to do is treat that graphic like a YouTube video, and embed it on my site. That way anyone who comes through here can play with the Times‘ brand, data, and journalism, and cool graphics can spread virally across the internet.

You could embed a directory of related graphics, so that people can play with a series of connected pieces. They could click through to nytimes.com for associated articles or more detailed explanations.

As it is, I can’t even figure out how to find a permalink to the graphic they have up right now. The best I can do is show you a picture (top of the post). Once they move it from the home page, it is lost.

Step one is creating really cool interactive content. Step two is leveraging the viral power of the internet to build your audience and get your content everywhere.

June 3, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 2 Comments 

Should newspapers charge for access to their archives?

About a week ago my sister, who admirably reads all my drivel without complaint, sent me an e-mail about newspaper archives:

In looking for sources for my history paper, I was very annoyed to find out that I would have to pay along the lines of $2.95 or pay for a whole subscription in order to see archived articles of specific newspapers.

The Seattle Times and the New York Times were both free, but the LA Times and many other ones that a google news search turned up were not. What’s up with having to pay for the archives?

She’s got a kind of point: All the current stuff is free. Why do I have to pay for the old stuff? It’s not like it costs you anything to provide it.

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May 19, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | Leave a Comment 

What is a subscription?

I‘ve tossed around the idea of using freemium services and mulled over the difference between a subscriber and a reader, and I think these are very important concepts to the future of newspapers.

I think this because I’m beginning to realize how securely the concept of a “subscription” is tied to the physical paper delivery. People are not going to pay to look at a newspaper web site. And while American newspapers might only get about 20% of their revenue from subscriptions, that’s an important source of cash to maintain.

Going forward, I think subscription revenue is going to be even more important to newspapers as new measurement metrics and a proliferation of online media channels give advertisers more places to spend their money (and consequently, bring ad prices down).

Not to mention, have a significant chunk of subscription revenue would ease some of the inherent tensions between good editorial and business practices.

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May 14, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 5 Comments 

The Craigslist vaccine: Why newspaper classifieds aren’t effed

I’m Joe Consumer.

Joe Consumer wants to sell his old computer monitor because he got a shiny new one. What does Joe do? He thinks first about his options. Here are the obvious ways to sell his monitor:

  1. Ask his friends and family if they want to buy it.
  2. Put an ad in the newspaper
  3. List it as an auction on eBay
  4. List it for sale on Craigslist

I’m sure there are hundreds of ways Joe could sell his monitor. But those are the ones that occur to me quickly and without much effort, and it’s pretty likely that at least one of them will work. Of those four options, only one costs Joe money.

Listing it in the newspaper.

The funny thing is that when I talk to people at newspapers, they all know this already. I get the “duh, we’re effed, shut up about it Jason” response.

But newspapers are not completely effed when it comes to classifieds, and here’s why.
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May 9, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 5 Comments 

Journalism in videogames: apply as a seasoning

If you’re tracking the recommended reading I have in my sidebar, you probably spotted the post on Poynter last week about the idea of using videogames for journalistic storytelling.

As a long time videogamer and someone who used to run a video game web site, I wonder if making videogames to inform people about journalism is really the right approach. The “serious games” market has suffered with the very community they hope to reach out to (the videogame community) because it tries to approach serious issues in a medium that people use for escape.

I think that journalism videogames developed in the same vein would suffer a similar affliction.

Which is not to say that they shouldn’t be made at all. Serious games have their purpose and it is a great one - interactive computer-based learning is undoubtedly going to be a key component in the way we teach people going forward.

But applied as a seasoning, think about what it could do culturally.

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May 7, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 3 Comments 

Why the New York Times “wins the Internet,” and three things you can do to catch up

This morning Bob Stepno’s Other Journalism Blog pointed me to a giant QnA type piece with the New York Times‘ Design Director Khoi Vinh.

Given my basic interest in design (both for print and the internet), and my complete admiration with the New York Times website, I dove right in.

While most of his answers are more vague than I’d like, it’s 100% clear to me that Vinh’s understanding of internet design vs print design is one of the big reasons that the New York Times web site is so far ahead of other papers.

If you read carefully, Vinh offers several good takeaways for other newspapers:
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April 29, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 2 Comments 

Subscribers vs Readers

New York Times reader numbersScarborough Research recently released its 2008 study of newspaper audience ratings. You can find a downloadable PDF copy here, if that floats your boat.

It’s really stunning to look at the difference between the print readership and online readership at most of the newspapers in this report. Up top here I’ve posted the numbers for the New York Times, arguably the paper with the biggest web presence of any news organization.

Their numbers are completely unrepresentative of the industry at large - it may be only 10% of their market, but 1.5 million readers is nothing to scoff at. It’s virtually half their print readership. I think this is because the NYT has done such a good job of positioning themselves online as the destination for national news in the US.

Here are a some numbers from a few other newspapers:

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April 24, 2008 | Filed Under Advice | 4 Comments 

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