AP Photo/Elise Amendola
If there's one story newspapers like to cover, it's the decline of the newspaper industry due to the Internet. The Idaho Statesman ran an AP story by Michael Liedtke this morning investigating some newspapers succeeding in spite of the trend--one of them the Idaho Falls Post Register.
It seems the Post Register is one of at least three papers in America that are holding the line or gaining readership, and their management believes it's because they offer their online edition only to paid subscribers. The Post Register has held its circulation steady, while the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the Wall Street Journal have increased. All three require a paid subscription to view online content.
This appears to run contrary to the standard Internet business model: give content away for free and charge for advertising. The article suggests that newspapers were at least partly responsible for starting this trend by deciding to make their websites free back in the 1990's. Today it's a standard belief that everything online should be free. Yet these three news organizations seem to be bucking that trend.
The key may be what they have to offer. The speed of the Internet allows news to be available online nearly a day before it can appear in a print newspaper. A large number of websites offer free news aggregated from numerous sources. If these three newspapers can get customers to pay for their news it can only be because they offer something that customers can't get online for free.
In the case of the Post Register, it's most likely good coverage of local news. Eastern Idaho supports nearly as many television stations as the Treasure Valley, but TV news usually can't offer the depth or breadth of news that a newspaper can. The Post Register likely can differentiate itself by being the only news source to provide that depth.
On the other hand, the Wall Street Journal is successful at marketing national news, a position right at the heart of the new-as-commodity battle. The paper seems to differentiate itself by providing news with a business focus, and is often considered a more moderate to conservative newspaper. This approach to the news attracts 2.1 million subscribers per year making it the second largest paper in the nation.
Yet many other newspapers feel that charging for their online content would only drive away readers and online advertising revenues. They continue to point out the fact that most content online is free of charge. But in so doing, they devalue their own work. The difference with news is that while most content online is primarily for entertainment, and hence a luxury item, solid news is considered an essential by many people. They are willing to pay for it. If not, television news would have killed newspapers long ago.
Each newspaper will eventually have to address the question of how to deliver the news and what, if anything, to charge for it. But news outlets like the Post Register, the Democrat-Gazette, and the Wall Street Journal seem to be making a case for charging for news without exception while catering to the subscriber's preferred method delivery: "Paper or pixel?"
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