4 ms·

Charging (a lot) for news online: The Newport Daily News

9 points by webology 17y ago

siukwai 17y ago
Interesting business model. It may work for very small newspapers because they have a lock on the niche, but I don't see this model working for larger newspapers. I'm pretty media company agnostic when it comes to news (except for the economist).
anigbrowl 17y ago
Want home delivery of the print paper? That’s $145 a year. Want home delivery and online access? That’s $245. And if you want just online access — to an electronic edition that duplicates the appearance of the print product — it’s a whopping $345. So it costs me $100 more p/a to not get the dead trees delivered to my door 6 times a week? I read the article three times to make sure I wasn't the one smoking crack.
- DougBTX 17y ago
  Better ad rates on paper?
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    I assume so, but I really wonder how they expect to sell this to their customers (apart from a few emigres with intense ties to their place of origin). That their online subscriber visits have dropped by 66% even before the paywall goes live isn't encouraging.
brandnewlow 17y ago
Send 3 guys, a Django hacker, a reporter and a business guy to that town. Get credentialed. Hacker sets up a blog and a GiantBomb.com-style structured wiki of every person, place, thing, story and issue in town. They now have the speed advantage and own local search. He also cooks up a self-serve, stupid-simple advertising system that works just like Facebook's original Flyer program. $15 bucks to run a flyer for the day. $50 for the week. Reporter covers local meetings and businesses and recruits citizens to contribute to a town hall blog. The goal is not so much to get pageviews off the citizen blog, but to show the community that the cool people are all on board. Business guy meets every small business owner in town, organizes weekly reader meetups, handles sponsorship sales. In three months, they could position themselves as THE web site for the community. Then it's a matter of selling monthly sponsorships at $300/month to local businesses and professionals who want a seat at the town's front page. You sell 40 of those and you're making $160,000/year. Add on another $20-30k in flyer sales. Meanwhile, the biz-dev guy cuts a deal with a few regional outlets to syndicate their content to them and with a few local businesses to host sponsored blogs for them. And 1-2 times a year they throw a must-attend event and make a profit off ticket sales. There's probably a bit of a ceiling to an approach like this, but the right three guys could more or less call the shots in their community once they get up and running.
natmaster 17y ago
This sounds backwards to me. Newspapers are dying because news is commoditized. Having an inferior product will NOT help these people compete with the free guys.
buugs 17y ago
Well isn't this a great business model for someone without competition.

9 points by webology 17y ago

Interesting business model. It may work for very small newspapers because they have a lock on the niche, but I don't see this model working for larger newspapers. I'm pretty media company agnostic when it comes to news (except for the economist).

anigbrowl 17y ago

Want home delivery of the print paper? That’s $145 a year. Want home delivery and online access? That’s $245. And if you want just online access — to an electronic edition that duplicates the appearance of the print product — it’s a whopping $345. So it costs me $100 more p/a to not get the dead trees delivered to my door 6 times a week? I read the article three times to make sure I wasn't the one smoking crack.

DougBTX 17y ago
Better ad rates on paper?
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  I assume so, but I really wonder how they expect to sell this to their customers (apart from a few emigres with intense ties to their place of origin). That their online subscriber visits have dropped by 66% even before the paywall goes live isn't encouraging.

brandnewlow 17y ago

Send 3 guys, a Django hacker, a reporter and a business guy to that town. Get credentialed. Hacker sets up a blog and a GiantBomb.com-style structured wiki of every person, place, thing, story and issue in town. They now have the speed advantage and own local search. He also cooks up a self-serve, stupid-simple advertising system that works just like Facebook's original Flyer program. $15 bucks to run a flyer for the day. $50 for the week. Reporter covers local meetings and businesses and recruits citizens to contribute to a town hall blog. The goal is not so much to get pageviews off the citizen blog, but to show the community that the cool people are all on board. Business guy meets every small business owner in town, organizes weekly reader meetups, handles sponsorship sales. In three months, they could position themselves as THE web site for the community. Then it's a matter of selling monthly sponsorships at $300/month to local businesses and professionals who want a seat at the town's front page. You sell 40 of those and you're making $160,000/year. Add on another $20-30k in flyer sales. Meanwhile, the biz-dev guy cuts a deal with a few regional outlets to syndicate their content to them and with a few local businesses to host sponsored blogs for them. And 1-2 times a year they throw a must-attend event and make a profit off ticket sales. There's probably a bit of a ceiling to an approach like this, but the right three guys could more or less call the shots in their community once they get up and running.

natmaster 17y ago

This sounds backwards to me. Newspapers are dying because news is commoditized. Having an inferior product will NOT help these people compete with the free guys.

buugs 17y ago

Well isn't this a great business model for someone without competition.