Local US paper Schenectady Daily Gazette introduces paid online content

Posted by Emma Heald on July 30, 2009 at 8:09 AM

Schenectady's Daily Gazette has decided to put much of its website's content behind a pay wall from 3 August. The local New York State paper is making full website access subscription only to coincide with the launch of its new site which will offer more web content.

Those with home delivery subscriptions will not pay any extra, the cost will remain $4 a week. Online only subscriptions will be available for $2.95 a week. Limited breaking news, blogs, TV schedules and photo galleries will remain free to view, while local stories, reviews, obituaries and columns will be subscription only, as will the ability to comment on articles.

Editor Judy Patrick explained the decision in a posting on the site's blog. "Our news content has a value that we need to protect in order to safeguard our business and, ultimately, our ability to do what we do," she wrote. "We understand that there has to be an effective business model in place to enable us to keep doing what we in the newsroom do," she added.

The paper had hoped that online advertising "would generate a significant amount of new revenue," but "it has not." One of the problems with making content subscription-only, one that has deterred many other papers from taking such steps, is the drop in website traffic that will subsequently occur. News aggregators will not link to paid material, thus further reducing the paper's visibility, and of course the ad revenue.

But for a local paper with a relatively small, focused audience that does not rely too much on web advertising, this might well be less of a concern. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has often been cited as an example of a local publication that has persevered with charging online as a means to protect its print product. And the Daily Gazette's method may well soon become the norm rather than an exception, if larger US papers follow up on their plans to charge online.

Source: Daily Gazette, Editor and Publisher