Okay, the local Gannett rag has decided in this day and age of shrinking subscription rates, falling advertising revenues, and just general suckitude for the newspaper business they would have to adjust their business model.
They’ve tried streamlining their product. Just for an example, the local paper used to have one of the few movie reviewers I trusted: I could understand his POV, and had a very good idea of where his tastes and mine would coincide. Further he had the ability to communicate appreciation and admiration for works that, frankly, I’d have found torturous to actually watch, myself. Now they pick, more-or-less at random it seems, a reviewer from another Gannett paper that actually still has a reviewer on staff, and publish that locally. Since there are still a number of papers with such, and they rotate in a manner I’ve never been able to figure out (not that I’ve tried very hard), it’s impossible to develop a good understanding of how any given reviewer’s tastes might match with one’s own taste. Leaving me, at least, finding the movie reviews utterly useless.
Similar economies have been practiced with many other one-time staples of the newspaper experience.
This has resulted in a daily paper that’s about 50% the size it was just 8 years ago, and with about 30% of the interesting, and unique, content it used to have.
This plan did not save the paper’s revenues.
So - on to plan B: Raise the price. Over that same period of time the newsstand cost for the daily paper has gone from thirty-five cents to a dollar (IIRC). Which has alienated much of their extant base given the first part of the plan I mentioned above.
This plan did not save the paper’s revenues. (Especially since my understanding is that advertising rates are directly tied to subscription numbers, so anything that reduced subscription numbers would be dropping the major revenue stream for the paper. )
Now, they have decided that the problem is that they’ve been loosing too much subscription monies to freeloaders (like myself) who were reading one or two articles a day on their website gasp FOR FREE. Which I have to admit seems to have a kernel a just complaint, even if I’m not sure that they’re correct to believe that it’s the major source of their woes.
To combat this they’ve decided to make the articles available online only via subscription. (Well, there’s a nominal number of free views per some time frame, but that’s damned stingy.) Which wouldn’t be a big deal. After all many, many, many other papers have had to try that business model. While my understanding had been that the pay for online subscription wasn’t all that profitable, when you’re in over your head, you’ll grab at anything.
Having said that, I object strongly to pricing that seems punitive towards so-called new media.
If you’re offering the online-only subscription at the same rate that you’re charging for daily home delivery (which includes the online subscription) you’re making it damned clear that not only would a so-called new media customer be expected to pay to support the generation of the content for the paper, but to support the production and delivery of the physical product, as well.
Now, if I were being asked to pay this subsidy for the paper as it had been years ago before it got gutted - I’d be more amenable to the suggestion. I can’t promise that I would have purchased, but I’d certainly have considered it. As it is, with the current lite version of the paper, with about 10% of the local content left, I just don’t see the point. I’ll miss being able to see the one or two articles I’d read a day online. If I really feel the need to read an article, I usually deliver the daily paper to my father after my mother has finished reading it. There’s nothing stopping me from taking a few minutes to read the articles I were interested in at that time.
(For that matter, since my mother hasn’t felt the need/urge to activate her online portion of her subscription for her current daily paper, there’s no pragmatic reason I couldn’t hijack that portion of her subscription. Alas, it strikes me as shady enough that I’m not going to do it. I may not have much, but I’m not going to be a thief, in my eyes, over the fucking Democrat & Chronicle. I’ve got higher standards than that. WaPo, at least, if I’m going to start stealing online newspapers, dammit.)
On an objective level, I have to admit that if there were a price difference between the two subscription rates, I’d not find the $13/month unreasonably dear. As it is, however, they’ve managed to price themselves right out of my wallet - just because they’re unwilling to treat new media customers are being as valid a means of distribution as their dead tree edition.
Is it petty of me? Probably.
It’s still how I feel: Why in the fuck should I have to subsidize something that I cannot use, just to get the version of the product I can use?*
Actually - thinking about it - I can begin to see why they want to have people reading the print edition: I suspect that, even they way that most readers gloss over the ads in the print edition they’re still paying more attention to them than the online reader does. (esp. with the prevalence of ad blocking browser add-ons.) So, for the purposes of those subscription numbers, that I mentioned above, and how they matter for advertising rates they can charge, I have to accept that a new media subscriber is going to be worth less to the newspaper than the print subscriber would be.
Bleh. I hate it when I talk myself out of a mad. I’m still not going to be subscribing to the paper’s online version. There’s just not enough substance there, any longer, for me to be at all tempted.
*I live in a small apartment building. And share the premises with an active mail thief. If I can’t be sure to get my mail that’s nominally being delivered into a locked mailbox, why in the Hell should I expect that I’d be able to get the paper off the front step before someone liberated that, too?