Publisher says newspapers must charge for online content
Posted: July 30, 2009 at 5:42 a.m.
LITTLE ROCK — A longtime advocate of subscriptions for online news, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman was one of two newspaper executives to address charging for online content at a "webinar" hosted Wednesday by the American Society of News Editors.
The model of requiring online readers to pay for some or all of a newspaper's online content - which the Democrat-Gazette adopted seven years ago - is referred to as a "pay wall."
The webinar's moderator, Edward L. Seaton, editor in chief of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury, called Hussman the "patron saint of the pay wall and the person who has led the charge to try to solve this problem that all of us are facing."
That problem essentially is how to make online news more profitable and prevent online businesses from exploiting newspapers' copyright content.
Nearly all advertising-supported media - including online services such as Google, television, radio and magazines, in addition to newspapers - have seen their advertising revenuedrop, especially during the current 18-month national recession.
Hussman said during the webinar, titled "From Free to Fee," that the Democrat-Gazette's pay wall helps it remain the primary source of information for the state.
The Democrat-Gazette has one of the highest percentages of city market (essentially Pulaski County) penetration in the country. Its print subscriptions have remained steady during the past 10 years, while circulation has declined at many newspapers.
Arkansasonline.com offers additional content, such as blogs, wire stories and videos, for free.
When Hussman wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal in 2007 called "How to Sink a Newspaper" arguing that the news industry has hurt itself by giving away content for free online, critics said he was behind the times.
According to the Newspaper Association of America, in the first quarter of 2009 print advertising dropped 29.7 percent compared with the previous quarter.
Newspaper executives arenow looking again at the pay wall model.
A group of top newspaper executives met in May in Chicago to discuss the future of the news industry - specifically, ideas for how to charge for online content.
Attendees of the closed sessions included executives of Gannett, The New York Times Co., E.W. Scripps, McClatchy, Hearst, MediaNews Group, Philadelphia Media Holdings, Lee Enterprises, Freedom Communications and The Associated Press, according to Editor & Pub-lisher, a trade publication.
The New York Times, which offers much of its Web content for free, sent a survey to subscribers earlier this month asking if they would be willing to pay to access nytimes.com. The survey suggested a price of $5 a month for access to online content only. The results have not been released and the Times has set no timetable for making any decisions about online pricing.
David Bessen, vice president of MediaNews Group, detailed at Wednesday's webinar the efforts of task forces put in charge of researching new models for MediaNews newspaper Websites. MediaNews Group owns and operates 54 daily newspapers, including The Detroit News, the San Jose Mercury News and The Denver Post.
Bessen and Hussman predicted that pay walls will become the norm. Hussman forecast that six months would bring the sea change, and Bessen estimated 12 months.
Not everyone thinks now is the right time to be exploring a pay-to-read model on the Web.
Several listeners at the webinar, which was attended by about 80 people, mostly newspaper editors, expressed doubt during the question-and-answer session.
"[Advertisers] will pay you for the page impressions on a paid site just like they will on a free site," Hussman responded. "Intuitively, advertisers ought to like a paid site better, just like they like paid circulation better than free circulation, but I haven't seen an empirical study on that."
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7, 9 on 07/30/2009
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