Rupert Murdoch's Paywall and the Goldilocks Price

Newspapers are dying, and they've been dying for quite a while although they've outlived several News 2.0 operations that predicted the demise of print. While the papers' problems didn't start with the Web, wags will tell you that the Web will be the straw that broke the camel's back. Every attempt to move online newspaper content behind a paywall (aka the subscription model) has failed. The most notable paywall failure was the New York Times, and you'd think they would have succeeded if anybody could.

The significant exception is with specialized publications; both the Wall Street Journal and the Economist have succeeded with paywall operations. Subscriptions have not worked well with general news outlets.

Here in Pittsburgh, we have PG Plus, which is a subscription-based paywall for added-value content - the newspaper is still available online, but the extra goodies cost about $4/month, and there's a sticky community dimension in that subscribers get to make comments.

Over in London, Rupert Murdoch announced his intention to move his News Corporation content behind a paywall. If you want to see The Daily, which is Murdoch's iPad-only iNewsPaper, you have to download the free App and then subscribe. It's pretty straightforward.

Murdoch is publishing The Daily's webpages onto the web so that Google will index them, but Murdoch is not presenting any homepage or index to his articles online.

The value of News is in its freshness. Breaking news is valuable. Outdated news is, well, "yesterday's news".

If you want Murdoch's news fast you have to subscribe, and if you want his news when it's aged you can find it on Google, which maintains his position in the pantheon of information sources. In other words: fresh will cost, and stale is free. And all is well in MurdochLand.

Except for Andy Baio, who realized that the content was online without any links leading to it. So Mr. Baio is publishing his own index to Murdoch's quasi-hidden content at http://thedailyindexed.tumblr.com/. Now you can open TheDailyIndexed in your browser and see links to all the content, which you'd otherwise have to subscribe to see.

This is being heralded as New Media Trumps Old Media, or David Beats Goliath 2.0, or Information Wants To Be Free 3.0. It strikes me that Murdoch can't be that stupid; he hasn't been so far.

I think Murdoch Inc. must be measuring leakage to determine subscription price points for The Daily. If the unauthorized access is too high, they've got something people will be willingly inconvenienced to read but the price is too steep; if the unauthorized access is too low, they're probably giving it away too cheaply. Somewhere along the spectrum, they'll calculate the Goldilocks Price, and it will be just right.

If that what Murdoch is doing, he's paving new ground. He's using Google and web metrics to establish market prices in the same way that people use EBay to determine prices.

If Murdoch puts his content on the street (on the web) and somebody picks it up, packages it, and manages access to it, is that wrong? Isn't that how Google works?

It's an interesting story in that we're seeing the middle state. The initial state was AOL and the NY Times. The middle state is Murdoch's foray. The end state, or at least the end-of-phase state, is yet to be seen.

Post Gazette Plus: A Look Behind The Subscription Veil

Nov.16th: PG-Plus Offers a Free Peak!

This screen capture is what PostGazette.com looked like on 11/16/09:

Finally, a look behind the Veil of Subscription! I was pleased they were offering a free visit to PG-Plus, a chance to look around, but I wasn't really impressed at what I saw there.

I think it would be unethical to (re-)present their proprietary content, since that is their value proposition. I was stumped on how to discuss this supposed new business model and I came upon two points I thought were reasonable: (1) wait a month, so as to not steal anybody's thunder, and (2) instead of showing content, let's just check the images from PG+'s first page to analyze the focus - because if a page is designed right, you can look at the pictures and know what it's about.

These are the key images from the first page of PG+ on 11/16/09.

I was surprised at two things: (1) this was all there was, and (2) this was the content on the day they chose to offer a Free Preview - when they should put their best page forward. What I saw in PG-Plus was not hyperlocal media, it was more like 1986 Yinzer-AOL-2.0

Perhaps there's a market for that, but I don't think it's the basis for a subscription website. It would be interesting to see some subscription numbers. I hope they publish them in the non-subscription website.

Post Gazette Plus 12/06/09

Hyperlocal News Buzz: Newsday Follows PG+'s Lead

Long Island (lohng-eye-land) newspaper Newsday will move their website to a $5/week subscription-based model on Wednesday. Most of their content will go behind the wall, with some minor content (home page, school closings, weather) available to all.

If you subscribe to the dead-trees Newsday, or get your cable service from local ISP Cablevision, you're in for free. The cable company crossover is an interesting crossover that gives them 2.5 million "subscribers" from Day One — although they're all passive, no-marginal-charge accounts that are likely to artificially inflate the numbers like a Vietnam body-bag count (now in XML format!)

What's most interesting to me is that they're flogging the hyperlocal news buzztheme:

"We are excited about this model because in addition to a unique ability to immediately reach about 75 percent of Long Island households, we believe the hyper-local approach is right for Long Island," said Debby Krenek, Newsday managing editor and senior vice president/digital.

The Washington Post just shut down their hyperlocal news experiment in Loudoun County, Va.

“We found that our experiment with LoudounExtra.com as a separate site was not a sustainable model,” said Kris Coratti, a spokeswoman for the Washington Post Company. “Updating the large amount of special features and technologies” on the site, which was run by Post staff members, proved unsustainable...

To a certain extent, hyperlocal news is the news industry's dot-com bubble: the industry is failing and both legacy powers and new entrants are throwing money into a possible web front with no indication of probability. If the bubble collapses in a progression of mergers, the last man standing may have enough eyeballs to either save a local paper, or drive the local paper out of business.


The nascent hyperlocal news bubble will give legacy players something to do while they're burning through their cash reserves, it'll keep the outsourced web shops busy, it'll give the new journalism grads a casual dress sort-of-job while they're working on their screenplays, and in the end the hyperlocal news fad will probably be another nail in the coffin for newspapers.

Features that would be truly game changing would be Google Earth mashups with local crime and accident reports and real estate - in other words, co-opt the CraigsList ads and the OpenGov movement - but that's already a crowded webspace without an established path to profitability. It's going to be very hard for a local newspaper to cost-justify building their own geo-news service, so the national startups may have a foothold: the legacy papers have the local touch, and the national players have the applications.

My PG Plus Wishlist

Here's what I'd like the Post Gazette Plus to do for me - help me to visualize the hyperlocal news within Pittsburgh's somewhat unique geographic context. Pittsburgh is a hodgepodge of overlapping backwater municipalities, and although I've been consuming local news since I moved here in 1985 I still end up wondering "where is that, exactly" when I see a news story about Lincoln-Lemington or Blawnox. I'd love to see box-in-a-box imagery that shows me, on maps, where these stories are happening. Stratification by niche neighborhoods isn't exclusive to Pittsburgh - I think about Dumbo, for instance, in Brooklyn - but it is an established attribute of Pittsburgh that the web channel could exploit.

Post Gazette Plus 10/21/09

PG Plus: Standoff, Casino, Governor

Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission has announced that bloggers must disclose their paid relationships with companies or products they blog about, even if the payment is only a free sample.

Let me be clear: I have received no payment, consideration, or so much as a free copy of the Sunday Post Gazette in exchange for my campaign to support the introduction of Post Gazette Plus.

I did think that a better title would have been "Post Gazette 2.0", or "post-Post-Gazette" (seems somebody already had pPG.com), but whatever - I'm here to support the hometown Black and Gold. But I'm not getting anything out of it, not even a complimentary pass to see what's actually in "PG+".

And that's the PG+ marketing plan, because you can't see what you're buying until after you've paid for it. I think that's asking too much - Salon gives you a two-day pass. The NY Times Select would give you a free look. All the street dealers know, if you want somebody build a habit, give them the first taste for free. Even McDonalds gives away their cold coffee.

As it is, I'm just sitting on the outside looking at those teaser headlines, hoping that maybe Santa Claus will bring me a PG+ subscription. I'd like to be able to entertain my Black-and-Gold peeps with some subscription-only, value-added scoop n'at.

Here's some enticing Thursday teasers:

Friday Post Gazette Plus

Post Gazette Plus Moves Forward

PG Plus: Cyril, PSO, Luke-Bob-G20

I must admit, they've got me moving closer to subscribing to the Post Gazette Plus. A dollar a week isn't too much, but I'm afraid I may never get out of it, like my ancient AOL account that I'm still paying $4.95 a month for, since 1993-ish.

I feel like a sucker giving up my info and my money for something I haven't seen, and I also feel like these headlines are a bit sensational in order to induce subscriptions. It's like I want to know, but I don't want to feel like I've been played as a chump by the barker teasing with, "hey, step right up, come and see the precious secrets, get your added-value web content right here, right now, for the low cost of only one dollar a week, step right up." Maybe I'm just projecting.



Click here for other Post Gazette Plus posts.

Post Gazette Plus: All G20, All The Time

As a news geek I'm loving this kind of value-added coverage, I just wonder how they'll possibly sustain it when the G-20 dog-and-pony show moves on to another venue.

I love this focus, but I really hope they turn to hyper-local news and more boutique-type niche writing. I get that the G-20 is the big gorilla right now, but I'm not sure PG+ is delivering on the premise.

 

Click here for other Post Gazette Plus posts.

 

 

Post Gazette Plus Headlines 9/06/09

It does make me want to subscribe

It looks like very interesting content, but I can't believe they expect me to subscribe to PG+ without giving me a two-day or even a one-day free pass so I can see what it really is. Otherwise, I'm buying a pig in a poke, sight unseen, trusting that this enhanced context (which does look compelling, I've got to admit) is going to continue at this level.

I wish you could try before you buy

Salon gives you a day pass. When NY Times Select was running, they'd give you a day pass, and use cookies to make sure you weren't abusing it every day. Web content and crack cocaine use the same formula: first hits are free, and then you're hooked.

 

Click here for other Post Gazette Plus posts.

 

I Wish I was a Post Gazette Plus Subscriber

Click here for other Post Gazette Plus posts.

Post Gazette Plus Series

1. Post Gazette Plus Subscription
   
   
2. I wish I was a Post Gazette Plus Subscriber
   
   
3. Post Gazette Plus Headlines
   
   
4. Post Gazette Plus, All G20, All the Time
   
   
5. PG Plus: Cyril, PSO, and Luke