Newsday to begin charging for online news

New York newspaper Newsday plans to begin charging online readers for access to its content, rejecting a trend toward free online newspaper content.

The move, which comes as the newspaper industry is mired in financial turmoil, was announced Thursday during a conference call in which Cablevision, the newspaper's owner, also announced it would write down the value of its $650 million acquisition of the newspaper by $402 million.

"Our goal was, and is, to use our electronic network assets and subscriber relationships to transform the way news is distributed," said Tom Rutledge, Cablevision's chief operating officer, according to a Reuters report on the call. "We plan to end distribution of free Web content and to make our news gathering capabilities service our customers."

Rutledge did not elaborate on the company's online subscription plans, but Newsday publisher Timothy Knight hinted that the move could be used in a bundling arrangement to cross-promote content on the newspaper site and in Cablevision's television programming.

"We are in the process of transforming Newsday's Web site into an enhanced, locally focused cable service that we believe will become an important benefit for Newsday and Cablevision customers," Knight said in a statement. "More particulars will be forthcoming over the next few months."

Such a plan would go against the trend of newspapers abandoning the pay-for-content model. Among the country's largest newspapers, only The Wall Street Journal has managed to continue charging online subscription fees. The New York Times abandoned a two-year experiment with the Web-subscription model in 2007, suggesting that the company's projections for subscriber revenue were small compared with advertising sales.

As readers have increasingly gone online for their news, papers have suffered declining subscriber numbers and lower advertising revenue, resulting in a dramatic industry contraction. Many newspapers have announced staffing cuts in the past couple of months, and some have warned that they may face closure soon if they can't enact further cuts or find buyers for their operations.

The Rocky Mountain News in Denver announced Thursday that it will cease publication on Friday, and the publishers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and San Francisco Chronicle have warned that they may soon follow suit.

[gerrrg]

Good luck with that, Newsday. People will just mosey on down to a different news outlet.

[Dylan_Wisor]

Copy and paste: it's a beautiful thing.

[igorz07]

Now THAT'S funny. ... Good God, no WONDER newspapers are going belly-up...they're all idiots.

[lkrupp]

"Now THAT'S funny. ... Good God, no WONDER newspapers are going belly-up...they're all idiots"

It costs money to produce a website. The use of ad blocking software by your ilk means the only way a web site can stay online is to charge for access or have some other means of supporting the website. Once all printed newspapers are gone that other source of revenue is also.

Nothing is free. Nothing.

[tm_anon]

Nobody mentioned adblocking software until you did. If you have a problem, perhaps you'd like to start your own blog about why adblocking software is a bad thing.

Oh, while you're at it, make sure you do so on a site with plenty of advertisements. You know, the ones that flash and sparkle and make lots of noise and pop out over the article you wrote and the pornographic ones even though the site hosts plenty of content kids would come across.

Nobody is against making back the money that was spent or even making a profit. We're just against how insane advertisements have become on so many websites.

[Sausagebiscuit]

Someone should me a trollblock extension. All posts by ikrupp are just bait for the taking.

tm_anon pretty much just owned anyways. good job ;)

[nicmart]

A recent report says that the New York Times web site is garnering as much revenue through web site ads as it spends on news gathering. If so, the printed edition, for which their is a charge, is the real drain.

[thelemurking]

It does not take that much effort to bypass adblocking software for locally sold ads. When I was doing a redesign of one of our sites, it looked fine in Opera, Safari, IE and Dreamweaver Live View... but for some reason I was missing one whole column where my ads were in Firefox... it took me about 30 minutes of triple checking my code before it dawned on me that it was AdBlock Plus. So I simply renamed the folder for our locally sold ads to "sneaky" and named each ad as numbers. Of course people could ad that as a filter and I could always rename the folder once a week.

This is just a case of old media not understanding new media.

I wonder if they aggregate news feeds from other agencies like AP or Reuters? Since those types of agencies send their feeds out all over the country where they are posted for free from local newspaper sites to big dogs like Yahoo.

As already mentioned... any article they produce in-house is done on a computer. It's pretty simple to copy/paste those into place for the web.

[mediocrates--2008]

@lkrupp

I agree with your basic point, but you can't convince me that you actively avoid using ad blocking software due to your higher sense of social responsibility.

[paulimusmaximus]

Newspapers are basically free in the first place. They don't make any money on what the cover price. Think about it, so a newspaper sells for 50 cents. You pay the paperboy 10-15 cents, you pay the drivers to deliver it to the paperboys, and you have to pay to print it. So they're basically giving it away to sell ads. Just because some newspapers like Newsday haven't figured out how to make as much money advertising on their web site as they make with advertisements in their print papers doesn't mean they should start charging. It's unlikely many people will pay if they can get the same news for free elsewhere.

[Vegaman_Dan]

Paid online versions of a newspaper could work if you get the entire newspaper. I'd even be willing to buy a Kindle if I could get local copies of the newspapers for their cover price of 50 cents. But I want ALL of the newspaper. Right now the websites are very sparse compared to the content of a newspaper. I want all those comics, business, liefstyle, etc. I want to browse idly. Web sites are much more immediate and focus on getting you the top stories right this minute and that means that the story you wanted to read later may already be bumped off the main page.

A 50 cent- heck, a 99 cent per paper charge for access through a Kindle or similar would be fine for me. I haven't bought a newspaper in about two years, but I would very likely buy a daily subscription for a Kindle.

[CyR00k]

@ lkrupp don't lump all net users into that group, pop ups are an insult to readers, however, Project Wonderful Ads and Google Ads integrate seamlessly into websites and are relevant to the content of the site.


The simple fact is that websites that provide news and entertain have been successfully able to monetize their sites. The issue is that print media flatly refuses to consider the successful business model of their net based kin. If given the option between paying for a print newspaper on the net and just surfing to one of the many ad supported sites that are available the masses will take the ad supported option; the past 8 years are evidence for this conclusion.

[Universal_Indie_Records]

Newsday won't have any success with this. Their content is not such that you can't get anywhere else for free.

They simply don't get it! Would someone wake them up and remind them (or make them aware) that we are in the midst of a revolution -- the Information Revolution. In it, one has to learn how to do new things or change the ways one does old things -- they simply don't get it!

Besides, aren't they aware of recent history? CNN tried to charge for video on the Internet (failed), NYT tried to hide their main editorials behind $$$$ (failed) ... meanwhile, Google rules ... they (and many others) get it!

In addition, given that Newsday is now a subsidiary of Cablevision, I, as a subscriber of Cablevision (tripple play) am already paying for the content they now they want to charge over again. Count me out -- no double dipping into my pockets!!!

[askj113]

And the NYT one was especially ironic because what is the entire news related arm of the blogging world but a set of very passionate editorial writers

[Apolune]

As one who does pay for the Wall Street Journal and would happily re-up for Times Select, I have to ask one extremely important question: What content do Newsday's hacks produce that is worth paying for? Staff up, spend bucks and produce a quality product -- only then will people consider paying for it.

[skillingssucks]

Stupid people doing stupid things. Epic fail.

[TV James]

hee hee... will transform the way news is distributed. Yeah... transform it to whoever else can figure out how to deliver without charging.

[jscott418]

Gee Newsday did someone forget to tell you that we are in a recession? Not a good time to ask for money to access stories that can be read for free on many other internet sites.

[roncleaver]

There is NO WAY I would pay for that or any other "news" content. It's all pretend journalism, and their politics suck too.

[fdunn3]

Yeah will transform it right into Chapter7 bankruptcy.

[elroy3054]

I wonder will the internet create a news cartel?

[NoFreeNews]

Where does anyone get the idea that news that has been researched, written and reported by a professional journalist should be free?

A news publication is a business that hires trained professionals to research and report on local, regional, and national events of interest and importance to all of us. The end result, the news story, is the "product". If a business doesn't charge for its "product", how can it pay its staff? (Do you think journalists donate their time and talent?)

News publications should charge for their content (print and online) and those who read it should pay for it. To those who object to paying for content, how many of you are willing to work for free or give away your services/products for free? If you think that's a good model for a news business, then why wouldn't it be a good model for you?

And for those of you who think you'll just go to another site to get your news...who cares? If you aren't paying for what you read and you're taking a business's "product" without paying for it, you're a thief. And what business needs more of that????

[Dylan_Wisor]

John Mancini, it's you! How are things going at the Newsday office?

[JadedGamer]

"A news publication is a business that hires trained professionals to research and report on local, regional, and national events of interest and importance to all of us."

No, most just print what comes over the feed from Reuter's, Associated Press et al, plus other syndicated sources. If they have any local content it is either from low-paid temps like students, or from other freelance writers. NOT STAFF. Staff is mostly techs (like typographers, layout, etc.) - the journalists are in the aforementioned news agencies or in TV, where the money is.