Is the Digital World Ready to Pay for News? I Guess Not.
Saturday, January 30, 2010 14:04One of the most stunning stories to hit the Internet in the past weeks has to be the saga of Newsday, the traditional Long Island newspaper owned and operated by the enigmatic Dolan family. Back in October, the paper took its entire Web presence and placed it behind a subscribers-only firewall available only to area residents with a Cablevision account or to those willing to pay $5 a month for access.
So far, they have managed 35 total subscribers.
That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site. Mr. Jimenez didn’t know the number off the top of his head, so he asked a deputy sitting near him. He replied 35.
Michael Amon, a social services reporter, asked for clarification.
“I heard you say 35 people,” he said, fromNewsday’s auditorium in Melville. “Is that number correct?”
Mr. Jimenez nodded.
Hellville, indeed.
The web site redesign and relaunch cost the Dolans $4 million, according to Mr. Jimenez. With those 35 people, they’ve grossed about $9,000.
The numbers definitely back up this sharp decline, as Newsday.com now trails far behind local rival Web sites for the NY Post and Daily News, and continues to trend downward.
I suppose such an inept business practice should come as no surprise from the same team that has run Madison Square Garden and the NY Knicks into the proverbial ground. The concept of micropayments for Web content is not a bad or merit-less idea; I’ve long supported the model for premium articles, such as opinion and analysis pieces. However, unless thousands of top sites band together under a universal payment system — say, five cents per article — charging for a news service that is free elsewhere, or of limited utility outside of Nassau and Suffolk counties, makes little sense from both a mindshare and, more importantly, an advertising viewpoint.
I’d call it another nail in the coffin of Big Liberal Media, but when the Dolans are involved it might just be safer to chalk it up to general incompetence.
