It's Our City is a project that uses TV, Radio and Web
to promote civic engagement in the Philadelphia region.The End of Free Online News in Philadelphia?
Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 6:06 pm - by Guest Commentator. Filed under: Community.
The Philadelphia Inquirer already offers a subscription based virtual newspaper for readers
By Mark Berkey-Gerard
How much are you willing to pay to read Philly.com? Two cents per article? $2.25 a week? Nothing?
That is the multimillion-dollar question the owners of the Philly.com, the Inquirer, and the Daily News are currently trying to answer.
In June, publisher Brian Tierney said that readers will have to pay for online news by the end of the year. He gave few specifics except to say it will be a “small charge” that he thinks “people would be willing to pay.” Tierney also said he wants a share of ad revenue from Google and other search engines that aggregate its news content.
So what does this mean for local readers?
Looking at what other newspaper owners across the country are discussing offers some insight into what might happen in Philadelphia.
In May, executives from nearly every major newspaper company met in Chicago to discuss how to generate revenue from the Internet. Some of the ideas that emerged from the closed-door meetings include:
- Providing a mix of free and “premium” content that users would pay to access.
- Charging daily or monthly rates for online subscriptions.
- Instituting micro payments - charging just a few cents per article.
- Joining with other news outlets to form syndication groups that control access to content.
In addition, lawyer and media mogul Steven Brill has been pitching his initiative called Journalism Online that aims to help facilitate the transition to paid news in the Internet. The idea is to help news sites target the most loyal readers - maybe 10 percent of users - to generate enough income to make it worthwhile.
It isn’t clear exactly which model would work for the Inquirer and the Daily News.
In a recent interview, Inquirer editor Bill Marimow said he could see a model that gives newspaper subscribers access to Philly.com, but anyone who doesn’t have a regular subscription would have to pay to access the Web site. Another approach might be to charge for specific and more specialized sections or content.
There are many obstacles ahead.
Philly.com - a joint publication of the Inquirer and the Daily News - attracts 4.5 million unique visitors a month, but much of the content is general interest. Local news, politics, sports, and entertainment are not the kind of information, for example, that readers of the Wall Street Journal pay to read online.
The owners must also consider how the millions of readers get to the stories. Most visitors to newspaper Web sites don’t go to the homepage and browse through stories; they come via search engines and links from web sites, blogs, and social networking sites. Without those links readership will go down and it could hurt future ad sales on the web site, which is where news readership is growing.
And if fewer people link to local newspaper stories and fewer people read them, it could also have an affect on the paper’s prominence. In 2007, the New York Times abandoned an effort to charge for access to columnists like Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, not only because readership went down, but because the columnists complained that it reduced their influence.
And trying to get money from Google will be difficult task and could end up as a long legal battle that takes years to resolve. Google does not pay for the content it links to on the Web.
However, whatever the Philadelphia newspapers decide, they won’t be alone in trying new approaches.
The New York Times is reportedly weighing new ideas like charging those who surf the web site the most or creating “membership” levels that give greater access for higher fees.
The Sunday Times in the UK, which is part of the News Corp group, looks to be one of the first test cases for a pay-to-read newspaper sites in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
And the Newport Daily News, a small Rhode Island paper, is already charging its subscribers more than twice as much for the Web edition as it does for the print edition.
To succeed, media owners have to do more than just sell a digital version of the paper. First they have to sell readers on the idea that news on the Internet isn’t free.
Mark Berkey-Gerard is an assistant professor of journalism at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.
July 6th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
If philly.com goes to a pay model I will simply stop reading it.
Right now that website is a distraction and not a very good source of news. I honestly think they are making a mistake & will not get very far if they expect people from Philly to pay for that website.
People in Philly don’t like to pay for anything, especially if it’s something that was ‘free’ before (sometimes it was never free, but the cost was wrapped up in something else, giving the illusion of being free - like trash pick up, libraries, & general city services).
July 7th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Philly.com going to a pay model is the best thing that could happen to sites like It’s Our City, Philebrity, Technically Philly, even the Business Journal. Heck, if they go to a pay model, I might try my hand at amateur, freelance investigative reporting and post it online!
July 7th, 2009 at 12:50 pm
It’s important to note how misleading your headline is. This will NOT be the end of free online news in Philadelphia. Living in Philadelphia, I’ll certainly be able to continue to access BBC.com, NYTimes.com and thousands of other websites.
This also will NOT be the end of free online news ABOUT Philadelphia. WHYY.org doesn’t plan (so far as I know) to institute a payment system for its news, nor do any of the local TV stations, nor do any of the thousands of local residents who post news to blogs, etc.
So, all we’re talking about is the end (possibly) of free online access to Philly.com. Philly.com is (IMHO) the best source for local news in the current market.
But that’s all it is–one site among thousands that now will apparently have some form of required payment. This really is no different from the world way back in say, 1996 before free news sites took off.
Will this represent a sea-change in the local news scene?
I hope so. Specifically, I hope this staunches the bleeding that is very quickly sapping the quality from that news source.
What’s going on is painful, but necessary. Some papers will do away with Internet sites. Others will charge for access. Still others will adopt a hybrid model.
Regardless, we need the industry previously known as the newspaper industry to develop a sustainable model for a world where the Internet is not a luxury or an add-on, but is essential and omnipresent in our lives.
July 7th, 2009 at 5:36 pm
If they try to charge for content, they’ll be putting the nail in their own coffin.
I have an idea: How about they continue to offer their content for free, but two or three times a year, they have a huge pledge drive and beg their regular followers for dollars. Some will contribute a little, most none at all, but in the end, they’ll probably find they’ve made far more than they ever would by creating a pay service.
Going forward, in a world of ubiquitous technology, the quick dissemination of information, and so many options, I really don’t see how anyone can realistically charge in advance for online news. NPR offers a potential model: provide quality content, bring an audience, and a couple times a year, tuck your tail between your legs and BEG.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
I wish I had more to add, but I agree 100% with the other comments: charging for online access to a mediocre periodical will do everyone a disservice. Only the local blogs must love the idea, since it will boost readership and influence.
I have always felt that the biggest hurdle to Philly news is that lack of political difference between the two papers. The Daily News and Inquirer cater to different readers, but politically both lean left. However, this is hardly the only issue facing the print editions. Perhaps Tierney should consider a major overhaul of the two papers before singling-out the internet as the “problem to be dealt with”.
-W
Author of Philadelphia’s “Mostly Politics”- http://bill84121.blogspot.com
July 8th, 2009 at 6:31 am
Why would anyone pay to view a poorly designed website with articles that are poorly written and full of errors?
July 13th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I prefer the print edition of the papers.
July 18th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Make your own life time easier get the personal loans and everything you want.