(bear with me for a couple of pars, this is all relevant)
Once upon a time, there was a paper in Scotland with 30 staff. They were passionate, they worked hard, they broke a lot of good scoops and – along with some decent sales and marketing promotions – they got their circulation up to 115,000, putting it in the top four papers at the time.
But it was 10p and, as this wasn’t a News International title, that sort of thing can’t be sustained and as the price went up, circulation went down – but the reporters and staff battled on.
Then two weeks before one Xmas, 26 were shown the door. Circulation went down a little but stabilised around the 40,000 mark before slowly declining some more – but the paper was full price so it was way more profitable than it had been at 115,000 at 10p and a staff of 30.
Then three more reporters were sacked and circulation went down to around 33,000 at full price, making it even more profitable.
(That’s the Scottish Daily Mirror for those wondering)
What does this have to do with online news? Well Stewart Kirkpatrick, Shaun Milne, Iain Bruce have all had their stab at the recent chat over paywalls. They think – like the vast majority of people – that the concept is ultimately flawed.
And they may have a point. In an age of the BBC and where the news in most papers seems identical, why should they pay?
But here’s the thing: if you have 100,000 readers online and 99,500 run away when you bring in a paywall, the other 500 paying mean that your site is suddenly making more money than it did before. Even if they only pay £1 each, that’s £500 you never had before. And I’ll bet that right now, most would take the 500 who pay over the 99,500 freetards.
And it may sound cartel-like but if one of them starts to make even a little money, you’ll see all the other papers have a little tinker with it as well until they learn how to use advertising better for the digital age.
This may well be the one case where less truly is more. Don’t make it right, but I’ll bet it’s the thinking.
3 responses to “Tale of an old newspaper shows why paid news websites may be the future after all”
Yes, sure you’re right and that that is indeed the thinking.
But WILL you get 500, or even 50, willing to pay?
I would say the answer to that is no.
Hmm , Craig are you from a news background?
Im not , Im just a run of the mill reader and even I know that if you have one site getting 100,000 free loader hits , and another getting 500 payiing people , the freeloader site is by far way more profitable from advertising revenue
Murdoch and his ilk are the analogue dinosuars being washed away by a digital meteor hit and I’m loving every minute of it.
The only way this would ever work is if countries operate what would in fact be a national intranet, much like in china has, where all sites are monitored and ‘unapproved ‘ ones are blocked.. Are you sure you want to do down that route ? Sure you would see your profits go up but at what cost ?
Gearoid, Happy New Year to you. The freeloader site only wins out there if people actually click the adverts but most people don’t. The rough anecdotal figure that goes around is that you need a minumum of 100 online viewers on a free site to compare to one print reader, so work the figures out from there.
I can’t see most countries putting up firewalls like you suggest – and I certainly wouldn’t want to see blockages – but at the end of the day it’s a struggle for many sites to operate proper news journalism when there’s so little financial incentive (and yes, news shouldn’t be about profit, but that’s the world we are in).