- Jahresabo Hauszustellung: $145.-
- Jahresabo Hauszustellung + Online-Zugang: $245.-
- Nur Online-Zugang : $345.-
Dies die etwas exotisch anmutende Preispolitik der Zeitung «Newport Daily News» in Newport, Rhode Island, USA (Auflage: 12’000).
«Our goal was to get people back into the printed product», erklärt dazu der Herausgeber des Blattes, Albert K. Sherman Jr., gegenüber «Nieman Journalism Lab».
«Build That Pay Wall High», meint in diesem Zusammenhang nun auch Paul Farhi in einem Artikel in der «American Journalism Review»:
- «The notion of emphasizing print in an age of pixels seems counterintuitive at best, downright loony at worst. [...] But as you may have noticed, online news sites aren’t exactly cash cows. The still-unanswered question is whether there’s a business model to sustain news online. [...] That’s why downplaying the Web, or dropping it altogether and going back to print only, looks not just smart for the struggling newspaper industry, but potentially lifesaving. [...]
As too many Web sites chase too few ad dollars, the price of online ads has plummeted to Depression-like levels. The cost of distributing an ad to a thousand people on the Web (a standard ad industry measure for comparing one medium to another) has crashed through the $1 floor and is rapidly on its way to zero (newsprint ads, by contrast, still command $20 or more for the same thousand readers).»
Weder Online-Abos noch Micropayments — «why would anyone spend even a few cents on something that might turn out to be disappointing, infuriating or just plain unsatisfying?» — würden die finanziellen Probleme der Branche lösen, schreibt Farhi weiter.
«All of which is why newspapers should make online access to their work very expensive or stop offering it at all:
- A massive migration back to print would restore some balance to the industry’s crippled supply and demand equation. [...]
- Newspaper readers are ‹better› than Web visitors. Online readers are a notoriously fickle bunch, and apparently are getting more so by the day. Web visitors barely stick around, yet they are counted in broad traffic statistics as if they were the same as the reader who lingers over his Sunday paper. In May, for example, the average visitor to washingtonpost.com spent 10 minutes and 58 seconds on the site. That’s for the entire month. On a daily basis, this works out to just 21.2 seconds a day. [...]
- Eliminating Web offerings would save precious dollars now being spent on a product that does little more than undercut the printed paper. [...]
- Dropping or downplaying the Web would give readers one less reason to drop their print subscriptions. [...]
Going print-only implies that newspapers will have to evolve into something they’re not right now. To compensate for the loss of immediacy, they would have to be distinctive and singular, offering something that no Internet competitor could. They would have to differentiate themselves with exclusive information – all fresh, all local – compelling photography and courageous commentary. They’d still have to cover the news, but in a way that offered additional perspective, beyond the broad outlines available elsewhere. Even more than telling readers something they don’t already know, newspapers will need tons of hustle and enterprise and a unique personality.»
Die Diskussion zu Paul Farhis Artikel findet übrigens bei «Romanesko» statt. Ich schliesse mich Kommentator Fred Schecker an, der u.a. schreibt:
- «Milking the cash cow in decline is a corporate exit strategy and might get people like Paul to their retirement (although I doubt it) but it sucks as a long-term strategy for newspapers and journalism.»
Update: Von einer weiteren «Print first»-Strategie, nämlich jener der «Arkansas Democrat-Gazette», berichtet heute Andrew Clark im «Observer»:
- «Almost alone among sizeable general interest papers, the Democrat-Gazette has charged for access to its website since 2002. It imposes a $5.95 (£3.60) monthly ‹fee wall› on its digital content – not, Hussman stresses, to make money online, but simply to protect its sales on newsstands.
The strategy seems to have worked. While rivals saw double-digit plunges, the Democrat-Gazette’s weekday circulation rose 1.7% in the 10 years to 2008. The paper has no bank debt and made a profit last year. About 63% of Little Rock households receive its Sunday edition – a higher market penetration than any other major US newspaper. As the recession bit, advertising revenue fell 13.2% in the first quarter, but less than the industry-wide drop of 16.6%. [...]
Only 3,400 people pay to read the Democrat-Gazette’s website, generating little more than $200,000 in annual revenue. But on newsstands, its circulation statistics are striking in comparison with its neighbours: in the decade to 2008, the Dallas Morning News suffered a 29% slump in sales; the St Louis Post-Dispatch dropped by 27%; the Houston Chronicle slipped by 19%; and the Kansas City Star declined 15%. But the Democrat-Gazette’s sales rose by 1.7% to 176,275.
Readers mean dollars from advertisers – and print subscribers are far more valuable than online visitors. Hussman points to the US electronics retailer Best Buy, which pays a rate of about $40 per thousand print readers but, sceptical of the attention span of internet users, will pay only $8 to $11 on the internet.»