Clarion Ledger soon to be behind a pay wall...
- Thread starter dawgstudent
- Start date
I think the jury is still out on how it will turn out in the long run.
Part of me thinks that your ad revenue will decrease significantly since your page views will likely decrease. Will the subscription revenue offset it? I don't know.
You're balancing circulation with subscriptions more or less.
In today's age with Twitter and blogs dominating news, it makes me wonder if reporters will want to work for a rag that charges for viewing. You can't link an article on Twitter and have it available to the whole world for free if you work for a site that requires subscriptions.
I just don't know if the product newspapers are selling these days is strong enough to pull in subscriptions. Basically the only thing a paper like that offers you is regional coverage you may not get elsewhere.
If I had to guess, you'll see the readership for these papers die off, and you'll eventually see websites pop up to replace the regional coverage you get with a newspaper.
Part of me thinks that your ad revenue will decrease significantly since your page views will likely decrease. Will the subscription revenue offset it? I don't know.
You're balancing circulation with subscriptions more or less.
In today's age with Twitter and blogs dominating news, it makes me wonder if reporters will want to work for a rag that charges for viewing. You can't link an article on Twitter and have it available to the whole world for free if you work for a site that requires subscriptions.
I just don't know if the product newspapers are selling these days is strong enough to pull in subscriptions. Basically the only thing a paper like that offers you is regional coverage you may not get elsewhere.
If I had to guess, you'll see the readership for these papers die off, and you'll eventually see websites pop up to replace the regional coverage you get with a newspaper.
back in the late 1970's. Took a break while in purgatory in south Louisianna for 7 years '81 to '87. Came back and subscribed. Had a great carrier til he died. Service got so bad at home, changed to ofc delivery and that was getting stolen on the weekends before I could pick up the Sunday paper. Started just buying in town. Last 5 years if a dead possum is lying in road between here and Jackson, the truck turns back. The price went up, holiday issues went up and I quit buying last year after 30 years. Just went to reading online. I guess I will just quit them altogether. Too bad, as it made it easier to keep up with news. Sports are mostly internets now. Hope they enjoy having the same number of subscribers as USM fans.........
Not because of the pay walls, but because they think they can take something that has been free for years, put a login and password on it and charge. It's not going to work.
What they have to do is change their business model. You can't just slap the print version online and think people are going to be alright with that. They have made some improvements with the blogging and the tweets but again, I have to go to different places to get to those things.
What I would be willing to pay for is an app where I have all the content coming to me as it is produced. And have that content updated throughout the day. Why would I need to go to a separate blog if you can just update the story or add it as a related item? And I don't want it to come in once a day and sit stagnate. There is no reason for me to live with that printed model. Also, don't be afraid to link me to other things. If there is a good article in another paper go ahead and link me over. They should work out deals with each other to allow paying customers to link to articles.
Let me layout what I want to see as well. Let me put MSU stuff at the top, Ole Miss second and leave the JSU and USM stuff off since they don't matter. I don't give a **** about Mississippi fishing so I can skip all that too.
Enough of my rant. It's so frustrating to see these dying industries flopping about trying to stay alive without changing the business model. The world has changed, the internet has radically altered how information is delivered and viewed by people. It's never going to go back to the way it was. They need to adapt or die. And putting up a pay wall is not adapting.
What they have to do is change their business model. You can't just slap the print version online and think people are going to be alright with that. They have made some improvements with the blogging and the tweets but again, I have to go to different places to get to those things.
What I would be willing to pay for is an app where I have all the content coming to me as it is produced. And have that content updated throughout the day. Why would I need to go to a separate blog if you can just update the story or add it as a related item? And I don't want it to come in once a day and sit stagnate. There is no reason for me to live with that printed model. Also, don't be afraid to link me to other things. If there is a good article in another paper go ahead and link me over. They should work out deals with each other to allow paying customers to link to articles.
Let me layout what I want to see as well. Let me put MSU stuff at the top, Ole Miss second and leave the JSU and USM stuff off since they don't matter. I don't give a **** about Mississippi fishing so I can skip all that too.
Enough of my rant. It's so frustrating to see these dying industries flopping about trying to stay alive without changing the business model. The world has changed, the internet has radically altered how information is delivered and viewed by people. It's never going to go back to the way it was. They need to adapt or die. And putting up a pay wall is not adapting.
its very easy to get around the New York Times paywall; even so, it is working very well, and subscriptions are up. also, you can already do that via Reeder
They had coverage that was worth a damn.
What they're running now is a skeleton crew barely able to put out a newspaper at all. They need about 3-4x the reporters they have now to make themselves a relevant local news source.
As I type this, their most recent article in their Rankin County section is 3 days old.
Depth of reporting on breaking stories is no deeper than a headline. I recall an online headline about a massive wreck on I-20 in Brandon. No mention of how many cars, whether or not traffic was stopped, fatalities, etc. nothing.
Lose the damn policy about omitting the race of criminal suspects. "A man in a blue shirt" doesn't tell me ****.
On the commercial side, the price of ad space is astronomical. It is far more cost effective to get a lot of radio time than to put a modest size ad in the CL.
They continue to downsize themselves to "right-size" their expenses with consumer demand. But its been a downward spiral. They make themselves less relevant, demand goes down. Rinse & repeat.
What they're running now is a skeleton crew barely able to put out a newspaper at all. They need about 3-4x the reporters they have now to make themselves a relevant local news source.
As I type this, their most recent article in their Rankin County section is 3 days old.
Depth of reporting on breaking stories is no deeper than a headline. I recall an online headline about a massive wreck on I-20 in Brandon. No mention of how many cars, whether or not traffic was stopped, fatalities, etc. nothing.
Lose the damn policy about omitting the race of criminal suspects. "A man in a blue shirt" doesn't tell me ****.
On the commercial side, the price of ad space is astronomical. It is far more cost effective to get a lot of radio time than to put a modest size ad in the CL.
They continue to downsize themselves to "right-size" their expenses with consumer demand. But its been a downward spiral. They make themselves less relevant, demand goes down. Rinse & repeat.
I don't know how the numbers have worked out for them, but I think it the way they're trying to do it makes sense. You still get 10 or so free articles per week/month (don't remember which) if you don't subscribe to home delivery. Or, you can subscribe to home delivery and get all the internet content free. I subscribe to the Sunday paper only (the coupons in the paper offset the cost of subscription), and get access to all the online content as part of the subscription, so I can read anything that interests me the rest of the week.
The main problem I see with this model is thatthe paper has tohave content people are willing to pay for, and the way that newspapers have been laying off reporters in the last few years makes that tough. The Commerical Appeal for example, fills a whole section of the Sunday paper with "My Life" or something like that, which appears to be nothing more than press releases and photos of local high school/nursing home awards ceremonies. They do have some decent reporting, but rely too much on the "extra local" news, which isn't even news at all, to fill the rest of the space. You can get maybe 3-5 decent local stories in the Sunday paper, and the rest is wire reports and things that really aren't newsworthy.
The main problem I see with this model is thatthe paper has tohave content people are willing to pay for, and the way that newspapers have been laying off reporters in the last few years makes that tough. The Commerical Appeal for example, fills a whole section of the Sunday paper with "My Life" or something like that, which appears to be nothing more than press releases and photos of local high school/nursing home awards ceremonies. They do have some decent reporting, but rely too much on the "extra local" news, which isn't even news at all, to fill the rest of the space. You can get maybe 3-5 decent local stories in the Sunday paper, and the rest is wire reports and things that really aren't newsworthy.
...so I guess the CL thinks Rick Cleveland is premium subscription worthy.
Or maybe the CL thinks their corporate slant news coverage is premium subscription worthy.
All I know is I hope the CL has some good Chapter 11 lawyers on retainer.
Or maybe the CL thinks their corporate slant news coverage is premium subscription worthy.
All I know is I hope the CL has some good Chapter 11 lawyers on retainer.
in Columbus has this technology in place now. Been that way a few months now. I subscribe to the e-edition so that I can read it anywhere I want. Not that there is much to read but I never have to worry about a wet paper that doesn't get pushed all the way in the box.<div>
</div><div>I used to read the e-edition of the Clarion Ledger for the high school sports stuff mainly. Dropped it when it got less and less coverage every day. Wasn't worth it at that point.</div>
</div><div>I used to read the e-edition of the Clarion Ledger for the high school sports stuff mainly. Dropped it when it got less and less coverage every day. Wasn't worth it at that point.</div>
It depends on whether their content is better than Joe Blow's News Blog. I'm not sure how much money can be made on Internet ads, but it's hard for me to see how ads can pay for every local paper and the salaries of writers, photographers, editors, graphic artists, etc. I think that if the content is quality and essential, people will pay to see it if they have to. I don't have a problem with that. It's only been free for the length of time that it's been on the Internet, which is far from always.
I also actually enjoy sitting down to read the Sunday paper as well. I just use the coupons to justify the cost to myself. Usually we basically break even on coupons, I think.</p>