“Print proprietors justify the current obsession with their websites on the grounds that they are having to follow the surge of advertising to the web,” writes The Independent’s Peter Jackson. “The one kind of advertising which is not following suit is compelling house ads for the newspaper itself.”

In one Saturday edition of the Times, students found 101 directions to timesonline. On the site, however, besides a 19-word plug for a DVD giveaway there was not a single pointer to the print edition. The Times also often runs a front-page banner for timesonline. On the site? No such banner for the print edition.

Even when papers go to great lengths to produce print-only supplements and pullouts, their websites simply don’t cross-promote. The Guardian, which in a weekend edition held 34 references to the website, also featured a Six Nations pullout, impossible to reproduce to its full effect online. The Guardian website, of course, offered no promotion.

Three quarters of Telegraph online readers do not buy the print edition, and are on average 15 years younger than those that do. Newspapers put much money into the websites to attract these young readers, but at the same time spend on supplements and promotions available with print editions: DVDs, CDs, and pullout sections. If the website could point that young audience to these print-only bonuses, perhaps the papers could gain a new following.

Source: The Independent