New Media Notes

In addition to working on a redesign, developing ideas on how to implement new online features like Newsgarden, I’ve also been racking my brain for the better part of the last month trying to come up with some revenue generating ideas to implement at Union-Bulletin.com. I’ve tried to keep up on the Twitter and blogosphere conversations/rants regarding online revenue models with particular interest in the pay wall model. Yes that conversation has taken place at our news org. MediaNews and others have made it easier for it to be openly discussed at companies like ours.

“We’ve got to stop giving away our content.”

“It was a mistake to give content away online to begin with.”

“Free online content is cannibalizing our print circulation.”

I’m sure these words have been spoken in news orgs big and small across the country. In addition, I’m sure this has been thrown in at small market news orgs:

“We are the only source of local content. Where else are people going to get local news if not from us.”

My concerns about the pay wall alternative:

• How it will negatively affect traffic and in effect further devalue our online advertising inventory.
• It doesn’t do anything to create more online revenue streams.
• It essentially takes you out of the digital conversation.
• It also doesn’t do anything about creating better advertising solutions for  local advertisers.
• It doesn’t do anything to address the need for more multimedia and data driven content.
• It is solely a defensive move. On the internet defensive moves will be swallowed up, spit up and left behind.

The real measure of the worth of a news orgs content is not how much someone pays for it. It is measured by how much people talk about it, share it, and even criticize it. Online that is the only measure.

My proposed compromise is as follows:

• Create web-specific, truncated versions of that days print stories. This could move news orgs from the “shovel-ware” mode that most seem to be in. Online content is read differently so I think this makes sense.
• Post the full story after a predetermined time period (2 days, 1 week) This will allow for stories to be indexed by search engines and be available for archival reasons.
• Continue to post breaking news as we have been, video and web-exclusive.
• Our front page would have  web-friendly headlines that invite people to click in and read the 2 or 3 paragraph web version. This way our page-views will not be affected and in-story ads will still be valuable.

This should alleviate fear of print subscribers dropping their subscriptions because they can get the same content online for free. With the truncated web version we can point people to the full length article in the paper. And for those that absolutely want the full story online on the date of publication we can push them to the e-edition.

It would require some extra work to produce these truncated/web-specific stories but once reporters and editors get a feel for it should be fairly simple. The web version would be a couple of paragraphs, three paragraphs at the most with a web-specific headline. This would also move us away from the “shovel-ware” idea of posting everything online exactly the same way as it appears in print when in reality content is consumed differently online.

I think this model would have a smaller affect on online traffic and may move publishers from the “shovelware” mode. The home page would display all the latest headlines (web-optimized of course) and once you click on the headline you get the truncated/summarized version not a paywall. This still keeps value on the story page banner ads. Passing readers will still be able to comment on and share the story.

It will require some tweaking of our work flow - reporters and editors will probably have an additional field to fill in InCopy. And it will be a trial-by-fire  as we decide what content to truncate and what content should be posted in it’s entirety. We’ll still undoubtedly have some customer service issues. And getting all the right pieces to work in a CMS - authorization, authentication, payment - will require some serious development.

Again, none of this addresses the need to find new online revenue models. That’s right, you can’t sit back and say “The economy will rebound and advertisers will again spend money with us.” Because what if advertising doesn’t recover with the economy? And let’s not kid ourselves banner ads, even if CPMs start to creep back up, will never generate the kind of revenue news orgs need to continue producing quality content. Not even close.

So if we absolutely must erect some type of subscription/payment barrier  - and the pros and cons have been thoroughly dissected and studied - please make sure you remain relevant online by ramping up your web content with top-notch multimedia, databases, and social media tools. And please pursue other revenue models beyond run-of-site banner ads.