Virginian Pilot Begins Charging for Digital Access - A Step Toward Suicide

Virginian Pilot publisher David Mele

Writing a blog and being contacted by would be advertisers I know one thing:  to get paid for advertising online, the number of page views a blog or publication receives determines advertising rates and ultimately long term viability if making money is the main motivation.  The folks at the Virginian Pilot don't seem to get this reality and/or suffer from the delusion that they are in the same league as the New York Times (10 free articles a month) or Washington Post (20 free article a month).  Hence, going forward, Pilot online readers will get only 10 free articles a month.  

The Daily Press was even more draconian and allowed no free articles.  The result?  I don't even bother to look at the Daily Press and don't link to it at all anymore.  The Daily Press was always an inferior paper, and since sifting to charging for online access there has been a parallel further decline in its content.  Hence, the boyfriend and I dropped our 3 day a week print subscription.  The Daily Press frankly seems headed toward extinction.  The Virginian Pilot seems headed for a similar fate in my view.  Readers should expect a marked drop in this blog's references to and links to the Virginian Pilot.  I hope that helps decrease its page views.  Here's the Pilot's bullshit reasoning:

Our next change begins today, as we implement a new membership model which will require subscriptions for unlimited access to our journalism and content online.

Current subscribers to The Virginian-Pilot will receive membership and full access to our digital content as part of their existing subscriptions, at no additional charge.

For nonsubscribers, we will allow some sampling of our content on a monthly basis, with a system that will require membership to gain access to our digital content after 10 articles are read. Some sections of our websites will remain freely available, including home pages, obituaries, and online marketplaces for jobs, autos, and real estate.

There are plenty of free news outlets where one can find better quality coverage.  Truth be told, the Pilot only cares about selling advertising.  Quality journalism has always been a secondary concern.  Online traffic will seek these out and one can hope that the Virginian Pilot meets the end it deserves as readership declines further and advertisers balk at paying for inferior coverage.

Will Washington Post Cut it Own Throat and Charge Internet Readers?

One of the phenomenons that has been interesting to watch is the reaction of old fashioned newspapers to the rise of the Internet and the exploding accessibility to news through alternate outlets.  Yes, most newspapers have a web version, but historically their main revenue has come from advertising sales in print editions.   Indeed, the two main local papers in Hampton Roads continue to operate their papers as a frame work for selling advertising and actual news content has become filler between the advertising pages.  Worse yet, as the ad revenues have dropped, writers and columnists have been eliminated and the quality of what news and opinion pieces continue to exist has plummeted thereby accelerating the death spiral.  Some newspapers have reacted by charging web readers - a move that I believe in the longer term will simply drive web readers away and ultimately lead to even fewer subscribers and readers.   

Two cases in point: the New York Times and the local Daily Press.  The latter requires that either one be a 7 day a week print edition subscriber or a paid online subscriber in order to access news articles online.  What's been my reaction?  I simply no longer even bother with the Daily Press and all links to that publication have disappeared from this blog.  That's right, they are 100% gone - as are blog readers who might have followed the link for the full article.  That translates to fewer over all visitors and fewer page view - which leads to advertisers being even less willing to purchase ad space in either version of the newspaper.  

The New York Times hasn't been quite as stupid as the folks at the Daily Press and one can still get 10 free articles per month (20 if one has two computers with different IPS addresses).  So what happens on this blog?  After the free articles for any given month have been used up, all links to New York Times stories disappear from this blog until the following month.  Meanwhile, there is reduce link trough traffic, fewer pages views, and advertisers are less willing to pay for advertising space.  As with the Daily Press, it is a case of being penny wise and pound foolish. 

Now the Washington Post seems poised to cut its own throat and implement some sort of pay for web access scheme.  My prediction?  People will not be willing to pay for it.  A piece on Andrew Sullivan's blog looks at the thoughts of other critics of what I suspect will be a failed strategy:

Rod Dreher, for one, isn't buying the WaPo's subscription strategy:

[I] visit its site multiple times per day, and often come away with articles to link to and comment on. Would I pay for it? No, I wouldn’t. If I lived in Washington, or wrote mostly about politics on this blog, I would. But I live in Louisiana, and besides, I already pay a lot of money to subscribe to a quality national newspaper, The New York Times. I keep going back and forth about whether to subscribe to The Wall Street Journal’s digital edition, because I love the Weekend Review section so much. The problem is that subscribing to the Times costs over $400 a year. Do I have an extra $300 lying around to subscribe to the Journal too? I do not. It has to be one or the other. I need to rethink which one it’s going to be. One reason I’ve stuck with the Times is that it’s much easier to use their links in this blog.

TNC, unlike Dreher,"read[s] the Post online enough to say that I would pay for this". But:

The problem with the Post is that the paper has been so decimated that you wonder whether they still have a product they can sell. I wonder if the Post basically got it backwards--they tried to save by cutting, but in cutting damaged the product (and the brand), and now the Post is trying to get people pay a much less substantial product. It seems it would have been smarter to charge when you had something you knew you could charge for.

In the case of the Daily Press, it truly is no longer worth paying for.  Indeed, the Press' headquarters building is now for sale  as a cost cutting measure.  Charging for online reading is only going to hasten the Press' death.  I hope the Post doesn't follow the Daily Press' model of slow suicide.