The New York tabloid Newsday is to end the practice of giving away content on the web. Precipitously this decision came on the day it was reported that a US daily newspaper, Rocky Mountain News, is to shut. Is it the beginning of the end of free content?I blogged about the end of free content in-depth recently when I asked "Time for newspapers to start charging?". I went through the various arguments at the time and won't rehash here, but it is telling what has happened since I wrote.That post was only written last Thursday, a mere eight days ago but that time elapsed feels a good deal longer. Take a look at the headlines from the last week telling what has happened to the US and UK newspaper businesses in that short space of time.
Profits plummet at Washington Post as Gannett slashes dividendby Staff, Brand Republic 26-Feb-09, 09:00 Regional titles suffer circulation declines in second half of 2008by Maisie McCabe, mediaweek.co.uk 26-Feb-09, 16:Trinity Mirror reports loss of £73m as revenues plungeby Jacquie Bowser, Brand Republic 26-Feb-09, 09:00 Hearst's San Francisco Chronicle could become next US newspaper casualtyby Staff, Brand Republic 25-Feb-09, 09:05 Trinity Mirror cuts 70 jobs as 50 face axe at Northcliffeby Staff, Brand Republic 24-Feb-09, 08:50 Philadelphia's The Inquirer files for bankruptcyby Staff, Brand Republic 23-Feb-09, 09:00 New York Times Company abandons dividend to save cashby Staff, Brand Republic 20-Feb-09, 09:00
Until today no daily newspaper had closed, but wit the Rocky Mountain News shutting more are bound to follow. Then enter Cablevision Systems Corp which bought Newsday in May 2008 from Tribune Corp for $650m. It has since had to write down Newsday's value by $402m.Two things here really, clearly last May was not the smartest time for a company to enter the newspaper market. That said, considering no one quite knew how bad it was, you can call the decision to buy as unfortunate.Cablevision had two options really. To relaunch the site and trundle onwards hoping things got better or go for the transformational option, which it plans by turning the site into "an enhanced, locally focused cable service that it hopes will become an important benefit for Newsday and Cablevision customers".There are no details as yet. No clues to how much it might charge, but this move is going to be very closely watched.Newsday has started the ball rolling and it doesn't take a genius to predict that others will follow suit. In my post last week I mentioned the recent comments of Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times. He said there was a deadly serious discussion continuing within The Times about ways to get consumers to pay for newspapers’ content and they were looking at a list of options.The headlines above from one week tell their own story. There are many more you can include from today (Nat Mags are cutting 15% of staff and B2B publisher Centaur has seen profits wiped out).Something has to be done. Charging for content won't fix everything. It won't stop more publications closing, but it will give others another revenue stream and at the same time reverse a decade long trend.That reversal needs to come for newspaper and with it a re-evaluation of the value people place on content (a significant one, I think). After all, content did once use to be king.
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Yippee.. for decades if not centuries consumers have bought content.
Just because it's on a screen does not mean that it can (or should) be given away for free. Content is no more / less disposable because of the medium.
I'm a particular evangelist for user billing on mobile - users do receive a (not insignificant) bill at the end of every month, do they not?
Why bust our balls and bend over backwards to offer something for nothing when we can, and should be charging for it. Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
Alex I think the mobile thing, charing for content there, might well add to the ground swell for charing for digital content par se.
This is all well and good but this is the Internet we're talking about. If all the current players adopt a paying subscription based model somebody will come along and offer it for free (ad supported) and swoop up the masses of disgruntled people unwilling to pay subscriptions. A prescedent has been set, people are used to getting free editorial online. I don't see how this can be reversed.
The precedent is hardly very old. Besides if newspapers go out of business because of a lack of advertising where is this revenue going to come from for those who are going to swoop up the masses? Part of the problem is that audiences have surged online, not so the revenues to match.
Fortunately free content is here to stay. There has been a major paradigm shift since the large newspapers went online and it is not about to revert.
Lots of newspapers will go out of business because the current advertising routes do not currently work as well as they should. Display advertising is great but it is not the answer, it is simply the same type of advertising that has been done offline for years but wedged onto the web.
Like Google did with the PPC platform, newspapers will need to come up with a new way to monetise (I apologise for the Americanism) their content. What this is nobody know but it will happen in the next 5 years and it will change the landscape for ever.
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Newsday will be gone down the sink hole in no time. It has nothing along the lines of any USP to warrant paying for it, nuff said.
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In an editorial today The Economist joins the growing chatter that says the days of (entirely) free content
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More newspapers were talking of charging yesterday as Google CEO Eric Schmidt told executives in San
A few more interesting bits out of the Newspaper Association of America with stories about how badly
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