An SNA Blog Paints a Picture of a Flawed Theory
Posted on May 13, 2010 by Mediabids
The blog post below, from the Suburban Newspaper Association of America, unintentionally offers the perfect illustration of the illogical thinking of many publications in regards to pay walls on web sites. On one hand, the author, Deb Shaw, points out that newspapers are the primary initiators of local content and that other mediums, including citizen-written efforts and blogs are ill equipped to displace newspapers in this role. On the other hand, the author ominously quotes a survey showing that most Americans want their news for free and would search elsewhere for content if it was not given away free by publications.
Search where? If local newspapers are not writing it, readers can search all they want, it won't exist. I want a new car to be free but no matter how many auto dealers I go to the darn things still cost money. Besides, am I missing something, hasn't the last 10 years taught publications that the cost of creating content and distributing it free on websites outweighs the revenue that can be generated by online ads of any form? On some level it is supply and demand- online advertisers are buying traffic and there are so many online opportunities that supply online has far outstripped demand, thereby deflating ad rates and that will make it tough for originally produced free content to be paid for entirely by paid advertising anytime in the near future.
If you disagree with me and want to read more of the "give-it-away-free-because-someday-traffic-will-result-in-revenue" philosophy go to the SNA's website, here.
Weathering The Perfect Storm
By Deb Shaw
Editor, Suburban Publisher
While the news media industry has spent the last few years reeling from the financial pitfalls of the economic meltdown, declining readership and plummeting advertising revenues, small dailies and community weeklies have proved profitable, and are, increasingly, the dominant source for local coverage.
So concludes The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s State of the News Media 2010 report, covering two areas that are of particular interest to SNA members — Newspapers and Online.
As expected, the report reveals the challenging economic state of the newspaper industry, and paints a stark picture of the woeful economic realities at many metro newspapers. However, it points out that smaller, suburban and community newspapers are faring much better economically.
“The problems are not uniform across the industry. Big-city papers continue to have the worst of it in these difficult times. Small dailies and community weeklies, with the exception of some that are badly positioned or badly managed, still do better. The latter come closer to the late-20th century position of newspapers as the dominant source for local information and the place for local merchants to advertiseAnother noteworthy finding relates to online news consumption and pay walls. Any publisher thinking of erecting a pay wall should consider that, according to the report, just 7% of Americans express any willingness to pay for news content. Instead, large majorities said they would look for content elsewhere if their favorite site put up a pay wall.
In addition, the report addresses social media (now firmly established as part of the media ecosystem), citizen news sites (most are not in a position to take on the job of traditional news outlets), blogging (it’s declining) and user habits relative to news consumption (we’ve become grazers — on a typical day, nearly half of Americans now get news from four to six different platforms).
The entire report is available, free of charge, at www.stateofthemedia.org
Tagged content newspaper websites association suburban of newspapers magazines america sna paywalls advertising pay publications free revenue
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