A 1,300-word op-ed in The Wall Street Journal from a mid-market newspaper publisher launched a four-day long, interesting, informative and thoughtful e-mail debate in the Digital Media Federation e-forum earlier this month.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Publisher Walter E. Hussman wrote the op-ed, which ran in The Wall Street Journal on May 7, 2007. The headline was “How to Sink a Newspaper.”
In the essay, Hussman explained and defended his decision to maintain a monthly subscription fee for most content on the Democrat-Gazette Web site, while many other newspaper Web sites move away from paid content.
“One has to wonder how many of the newspaper industry's current problems are self-inflicted. Take free news,” Hussman wrote. “News has become ubiquitous, free, and as a result, a commodity. Anytime you are trying to sell something that becomes a commodity, you have lost much of the value in providing that product or service.”
Hussman wrote newspapers with free news online tend to have more significant circulation declines than those that keep a lot of content behind the payment wall. (He used the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, which moved from a mostly-paid online content model to a free online model in 2006 as a primary example.) In conclusion, Hussman wrote, " It is time for newspapers to reconsider the ultimate costs and consequences of free news.”
The Digital Media Federation, a network of newspaper and other digital media professionals and editors, took up that challenge just a few days after the op-ed ran. The e-forum debate, at its start, focused on whether the free availability of newspaper-produced and Associated Press content online was contributing to the print circulation decline at most newspapers.
As the string of e-mails continued, the focus quickly shifted to the importance of creating valuable content unavailable outside the newspaper (print or online) to attract quality readers that advertisers will pay a premium to access. Media buyers, academics and online newspaper editors all joined the conversation.
Several federation members thought this was an important conversation to share across areas, and that people in circulation, research and other areas of the newspaper industry may benefit, or at least find the debate an interesting read. So that's what we did.
If you are a member of any Newspaper Association of America federation (including classified, circulation, research, retail, etc.), you can access the conversation with your federation ID number. If you're not a federation member, conversations like these are a great reason to sign up. (Learn how to do that here.)