Newspapers Rethink Paywalls As Digital Efforts Sputter

[Purveyor]

Washington (AFP) - Paywalls were supposed to help rescue newspapers from the crisis of sinking print circulation as readers shifted to getting their news online.

But with a few exceptions, they have failed to deliver much relief, prompting some news organizations to rethink their digital strategies.

Newspapers in the English-speaking world ended paywalls some 69 times through May 2015, including 41 temporary and 28 permanent drops, according to a study by University of Southern California researchers.

Paywalls "generate only a small fraction of industry revenue," with estimates ranging from one percent in the United States to 10 percent internationally, the study in July's International Journal of Communication said.

MORE...

http://news.yahoo.com/newspapers-rethink-paywalls-digital-efforts-sputter-093036224.html

[True Dough]

1. It was doomed to failure...

Newspapers have been in a vicious spiral of laying off reporters to save money. Smaller newsrooms generate fewer in-depth reporting and fewer exclusive stories. Meanwhile, sites like NPR in the U.S. and CBC in Canada post most of their stories online for free. Why would consumers pay for the newspaper's version of the story? There's little reason for people to pay for news anymore. It's definitely a dying industry with no foreseeable lifeline.

[Shandris]

2. Corrupted, controlled coverage, a mentality set in the 70s still (with the propaganda resources...

...that inherently accompany the entire age of mass media before the internet), and a rank upon rank of CFR-supporting globalists masquerading as 'two sides'?

Gee, I can't imagine why fewer people want to pay for that idiocy. I enjoy watching the desiccated carcass of this 'industry' burn on the altar of the deity whose ideals they push so often.

[Cairycat]

3. One thing that has always pissed me off

is that to subscribe to a newspaper digitally, you pretty much have to get to the point of giving them your credit card number. There are a couple of papers I'd subscribe to, if it weren't for that damn coyness. You have a product, tell me how much it costs, upfront, and I will decide if I want to buy it. Not telling you how much it is until you have practically bought it is bullshit.

[uncle ray]

4. my local county newspaper did that without any advance notice.

and like you said, didn't even publish what an online subscription costs anywhere accessible to the online public. what is really curious, is you can pick the actual printed paper up for FREE at local businesses. i dunno, but if i were a potential advertiser, i'd prefer an infinite number of potential eyes on my ad vs. X number of paid subscribers.

another larger local paper added a paywall that gives readers a handful of free stories each month...unless the reader is smart enough to open the paper's website in a private window, which allows unlimited access.

[jmowreader]

5. My paper got rid of its HTML paywall about two years ago

We used to run two HTML websites.

The first one (which we still have) was free, was broken down into several sections - news, sports, opinion, columns... - and contained maybe five new articles a day in each section. The other one was behind a paywall and had every story from that day's edition. We largely got rid of it because keeping it straight was such a pain in the ass.

[lindysalsagal]

6. My local CT paper still has the paywall. So I can live without it.

They're proving to me that they don't matter in my life, and I don't value them. I would read it but I refuse to have the paper deposited on my lawn, forcing me to recycle it in order to obtain the online version.

Even worse, when some local papers get your subscription, the larger, county-level paper gets your name and address and starts leaving their paper on your lawn, saying that it's "automatic".

It took months to get this to stop once, because they were using the name of the owner who had owned my house 6 years before me! The guy delivering it the paper didn't speak english, so I couldn't get him to stop. I would go out and wait for him early in the morning and yell at him giving it back to him, and still the paper would arrive the next day.

It got so bad, I started nailing up the papers in their bags unread on a wooden saw horse on the edge of my driveway. I probably had 20+ old dead rotten papers on my shrine with a sign in english and spanish that said "no papers." I was hoping the eyesore might make the news some day and I could tell the reporter to tell the newspaper to leave me the hell alone.

This is paper terrorism, and I have to clean it all up.

Even worse than that, I'm afraid to go away for a few days with all of this evidence piling up that I'm not home.

My feeling about the local "paper" is that it's me against them. They're terrorists.