All Posts Tagged With: "newsday"

I’ve been getting some pushback on my previous blog item about Newsday’s decision to put up a subscription wall to its website content except for Newsday print subscribers and subscribers of Optimum Online cable/Internet service (same ownership). This actually is a good business model for Newsday because of its unique position, though it probably could not be duplicated elsewhere, the critics suggest.

Sorry, I don’t buy it.

Consider this: Instead of a “no trespassing, freeloaders!” subscription wall, what if Newsday.com had instead come up with a special Newsday membership program? It could include all sorts of goodies that I’ve written about before with news membership schemes: premium news content and services; free or discounted tickets, or preferred seating, to news-related public lectures or other events; free iPhone or smart-phone custom news app; and (most importantly, in my view) lots of killer discounts and free deals from participating Newsday advertisers.

The memberships are given free to Newsday print subscribers and Optimum Online customers. Others pay a fee to be a member (let’s say $5 a week, the same as the cost of a web-only subscription). The difference is that the current Newsday strategy is forced; the membership option is voluntary. That is, with voluntary memberships, anyone can view Newsday.com content in full for free. So if you live in Manhattan and want New York news online, you can find it at NYTimes.com, NYDailyNews.com, NYPost.com, or Newsday.com. With Newsday’s current strategy, most new Yorkers will stick to the other three newspaper websites.

AND, to make matters worse, the forced subscription program has cut Newsday off from Google and the traffic it can send, and reduced the paper’s influence in the world outside of Long Island.

With a voluntary membership approach, Newsday would be selling something UNIQUE: its membership program offerings. With its existing strategy, it’s trying to sell COMMODITY news content. That can’t work.

What’s wrong with this webpage I encountered the other day?

Besides the lack of wisdom of a general-interest newspaper (Newsday) putting a pay wall on its website for non-unique content (my opinion, shared by many other media experts), the worse part is that Newsday.com is leaving money behind. Double-dumb.

Here’s my experience:

1. I saw a Twitter post linking to this article; clicked through.
2. Got to Newsday.com teaser page with intro to story and a link to “VIDEO: See the Droid in action.”
3. Video seemed interesting, so I clicked.
4. Got to the page above, which gave me ONLY the options of subscribing (to the newspaper; to Optimum Online, a NY cable service; or to Newsday.com for $5 a week) in order to access the video.

Since I live in Colorado, I of course have no interest in any of those options. But if I could have paid 25 cents, or may 50, I might have done so to watch the video. Newsday.com ignores money from non-local online users who might be willing to pay a one-off fee.

In practice, I and most savvy online users probably would have clicked and searched a bit more to find a similar video about the new Droid phone elsewhere for free. But some percentage of people in my position would have paid rather than go through the hassle of searching elsewhere if there was a one-off payment option available. So Newsday.com leaves money on the table.

I believe that the kind of web pay-wall strategy that Newsday.com is deploying is certain to fail. It’s been done before by other newspaper websites in years past and it’s failed. But if the company is determined to lock down its news content, the least it could do is offer more options for viewing specific content.

Sometimes you just have to marvel at the inability of newspapers to grasp web publishing. Wow.

Tags: micropayments, newsday, paid content