Free news
Richard Addis, a former newspaper editor, argues in the Guardian that it makes sense to take quality newspapers and give them away. He makes some very rough back-of-the-envelope calculations to say that it can make economic sense to give away not just the lite papers we’re seeing today but quality papers because though paper costs would increase and circ revenue would go away, marketing costs would decrease and web revenue would increase:
Now consider the website effect. One of the best consequences of going free is that there would no longer be any restraint on the desirability of sending print readers to your website. Any newspaper with a cover price has to retain just a trace of ambivalence about driving readers away from print to a cheap digital source. The financial dangers are so acute that the FT, New York Times and Wall Street Journal charge in various ways for their web content.With a business model that does not require cover price revenue all restraint can be abandoned. Indeed the long-term mission of any free newspaper business should be to drive readers so successfully in the direction of the internet that print runs can be eventually cut back drastically, if not cancelled entirely.
The real mission is to get over Rusbridger’s green blob and take journalism into the future, unrestrained by media.
: Here’s an Independent roundup of free papers around the world.
Can a free New York Times be far behind? Yes, probably very far.
But if I were, say, McClatchy, I’d take one paper in one market and rework it — getting rid of the things you keep only to try to keep paid circulation (stock tables, TV listings, and so on) and investing in killer local reporting. And then I’d get the web site ready for prime time, making it even better than the paper. And then I’d give away the paper and test Addis’ thesis. With enough balls and smarts, I think it might work.
Tags: newspapers
September 12th, 2006 at 7:49 am
I read the article and one flaw in his arguement would seem to be that websites make much less from ad revenue per reader than print newspapers do.
September 12th, 2006 at 8:08 am
[...] This conflict includes circulation revenue, as pointed out by Richard Addis, and expounded upon by Jeff Jarvis. I’ll only add to their points that circulation revenue covers print and distribution costs. When those costs are largely removed, there is no need to pass them on to user, and that’s the reason why web content is free. [...]
September 12th, 2006 at 9:03 am
[...] UPDATE: The Independent's roundup of "freesheets" (dailies) worldwide that have (via BuzzMachine). Jeff Jarvis says: "But if I were, say, McClatchy, I’d take one paper in one market and rework it — getting rid of the things you keep only to try to keep paid circulation (stock tables, TV listings, and so on) and investing in killer local reporting. And then I’d get the web site ready for prime time, making it even better than the paper. And then I’d give away the paper and test Addis’ thesis. With enough balls and smarts, I think it might work." Right on. [...]
September 12th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Notably, McClatchy’s Hilton Head Island Packet (paid circ) is in direct competition with Bluffton Today, the free hyperlocal tabloid.
September 12th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
[...] In part a response to Jeff Jarvis' post that evaluates making paid-for papers free and how revenue from Web site ads works (or could work better), Matt Terenzio at Classyfeeds discusses the role of advertising on newspaper Web sites and fiting content to form (i.e. not just recreating print concepts online). I agree wholesale about the multimedia advertorials, Flash "books" etc. that he scorns as not only near-worthless content but poor uses of the Web medium, and I rather enjoyed Terenzio's discourse on the idea of mediia-owned distribution channels. He comes down to this: "Newspapers need to free themselves of the baggage that is weighing down their online strategies. Let print be print, and online be online, and don’t let one hinder the other." [...]
September 12th, 2006 at 6:14 pm
[...] [dica de Buzz Machine] [...]
September 13th, 2006 at 10:20 am
One of the reasons why it would be more difficult to give away the NYT is its widespread marketing and distribution outside of the New York Metro area. To many of these non-New Yorkers, the NYT represents a luxury item which confers an aura of status and culture that is more than worth paying the markup for home delivery to their own burg or ‘burb. Making such an item free (while not a bad idea at all IMHO) would cheapen that cachet, raising the interesting question of whether the NYT’s at-large readership would follow such a move or whether they’d select another expensive newspaper of national circulation to fill that niche reserved for conspicuous consumption.
September 18th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Its not a bad idea giving out free newspapers as it will reach a wider audience and the tabloids can still make money from advertising
October 26th, 2006 at 8:26 am
[...] 3. Give it away. A few weeks ago in the Guardian, a former newspaper editor made back-of-the-envelope calculations to argue that giving away the paper makes sense because it reduces marketing costs and increases circulation and ad revenue (while also increasing paper costs) but that the real value is that it would force the organization to stop protecting the paper and to drive people online. I like that in theory. I’ll be no one will have the balls to do it. [...]
April 5th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
[...] drastic models of new newspaper businesses, such as: * The free newspaper — here’s an argument that the Guardian should go that way. * The online-only newspaper — that has happened in [...]