Under the plan, online home pages, obits and classified ads will remain free. Business, feature, and sport stories go behind the walls. This is an extension of the experiment MediaNews started last year in Chico, California and York, Pennsylvania.
My sense is the papers will depend on prep sports to drive print subscribers to pay a little extra. The papers are also some of the smallest in the MediaNews universe.
Here's how MediaNews is selling the paywall:
Our new digital business model reflects the high value we place on professional journalism and helps us to fund our local reporting at a time of unprecedented change in the way people use and consume news and information.
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25 comments:
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lnwltqhA7R1qzj7lm.png
The papers are shit, so are their web sites. Sorry, but it's true.
Anyone want to make a wager on the massive influx of revenue this will bring? If this is their silver bullet they may as well say so long.
And oh by the way, their content isn't worth 1.99 per year.
The high value they place on professional journalism? Are you kidding me?
This is a joke, right?
Even with their stories being free, I hesitate to read them because they are so bad.
This is too funny.
Are you implying that quality journalism has gone south in langland? Why I am shocked that they are charging so little. One would think that a couple hundred a month would be a bargain considering the vast amount of local news coverage, advertising and outstanding graphics. Boy, did they leave a lot of money on the table.
Wow, I guess I'll just have to keep getting Facts stories from the Sun or Bulletin websites....
You get the same story word for word for free on all the other MN sites. Shh don't tell the reader
i would pay a few bucks a month just to make sure their tripe doesn't accidentally show up on my browser.
2:52, now that's funny!
Whittier and Redlands, better get a new cpa to count the money.
The point here is to let these websites die and just take the reduced revenue from the print product. These papers do squat on digital revenue. It would be more honest to just throw in the towel and go black online, but this is a way to backdoor the same result. Free digital content has been the greatest mistake newspapers ever made. This won't fix that problem, it is too late. But you can eventually lay off all your digital staff.
Free digital was not the biggest mistake newspapers ever made. There are many greater ones like not paying attention to rates, circulation, customer concerns, and a slew of others. What could they charge for digital even when their content was a c-. Who would pay for it? You can't compete when others do it far better, cheaper and slicker. Not to say they couldn't have done it better, earlier and with a little thought.
Listening to newspaper execs talk about on line is like getting marriage advice from Elizabeth Taylor.
I found this letter on a free website, a twice-weekly newspaper just started by the L.A. Times in Pasadena.
" pasadenasun.com
Mailbag: Welcome to Pasadena
6:00 PM PDT, August 12, 2011
advertisement
Welcome, Sun, and thanks for coming
Hello, gentlemen and ladies, and welcome, Sun!
I agree with your mission (“Here comes the Sun,” Aug. 5) that there is room for more and better news coverage for Pasadena, South Pasadena and San Marino, including thoughtful celebration and analysis of the people and topics here locally. Thank you, Joe Piasecki, for your extensive and well-written article on Pasadena Unified School District summer graduation (“Summer grads make the grade,” Aug. 5). I'm a member of the Pasadena Unified school board, and it was great to see this success story of some of our young people. The photographic coverage was great also.
I believe you have a niche of concerned readers who want the kind of information you will provide. So thanks again, and welcome, Sun!
Elizabeth Pomeroy
Pasadena
Paper has found a niche to fill
I can't tell you how thrilled I was in perusing your new Sunday Valley Sun on Aug. 7! At last, someone in the media is getting it right, i.e., attempting to provide Pasadena with a journalistic compendium of local news.
As a longtime Pasadena resident, I have supported the traditional local Pasadena paper — but more out of the principle of wanting a local newspaper to survive than from enjoying its content. Finding your new Sunday supplement (I haven't seen the Friday version yet) is like one of those eureka moments! This is the kind of thing my husband and I have longed for.
Let me be specific: When we notice that El Molino is suddenly reconstructed after years of the misbegotten labyrinth of traffic meridians designed to slow traffic, we know there is a story behind that. But where to read about it? When traffic in town is blocked on main thoroughfares for an hour, or there is a high-speed police chase down California, we want to know the story! Similarly, local political and human-interest events have long been neglected in the print media. These kind of things are, sadly, rarely covered in the Star News.
We don't need a “rag” that attempts to be both a national and a local paper at the same time. We do need one that focuses on the community of Pasadena (and the surrounding communities) with high-quality journalistic skill. I applaud you for taking the plunge (or giving birth, as you say in the Aug. 7 “Start the Presses” column) at a time when print media is struggling. But I do believe there is a niche to fill, and you have found it! I can't wait to see what you have in store for us.
Suzanne Lake
Pasadena"
Now, I completely agree with this letter writer. If only MY local paper would understand what LOCAL means, that would be great.
Since LANG/BANG papers all share the same Media News content, why not just all share the same website? Give the local papers an option to add up to three local stories under each paper's mast, but the reason most MediaNews websites look the same is that mnost MediaNews papers already read the same.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that one major factor in declining circulation is that so much inside page content is picked up from other Media News outlets, with no relevance to the local readersip area, that readers are rapidly being turned off to what no longer can be called a hometown news product.
to anon Aug 17 11:38 AM:
The answer to declining readership/revenue seems so simple in letter #2. Wonder what genius came up with putting local news in something called "the local paper." Give him/her a raise and name your first child after them. Lambert, can you hear them now? (Lambert's office - crickets)
an insult to insects everywhere. you are assuming he has input.
Full access to exactly what?
Just when you thought they couldn't possibly expand on dumber, there you go.
You can't be serious. Next you will tell me they aren't printing or delivering their own newspapers anymore and some hack is the publisher.
^^^ COTD right here.
One of the many problems with medianews is they can't sell anything, much less continue to try and dupe what readership they have left. I just wonder if they type out these proclomations with a straight face like a dilbert strip. Does anyone there have a clue?
unprecedented change in the way people use and consume news and information...to bad it won't be yours. just when i thought you couldn't possibly suck more i find i set standards way to high.
I wonder how many of these posts are anonymously authored by Jason and other hacks who couldn't cut it at the SGVN. haha.What losers. P.S. the "Pasadena Sun" is amateur and publishing a letter to the editor that was written by a disgruntled politician who bad mouths the competitor and well-established print organization in town proves that. But have fun reading the Pasadena Sun for their coverage of what the Star News reports.
I wonder how many of these posts are anonymously authored by Jason and other hacks who couldn't cut it at the SGVN. haha.What losers. P.S. the "Pasadena Sun" is amateur and publishing a letter to the editor that was written by a disgruntled politician who bad mouths the competitor and well-established print organization in town proves that. But have fun reading the Pasadena Sun for their coverage of what the Star News reports.
the best part of this discussion is a LANG employee so challenged by technology he double-posted the above comment.
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