Archive 2007 January 22 - 31 Port Chester Media Watch

Port Chester Media Watch
Abel's Fables #2

Local News Should Be Free

Most content on http://www.westmorenews.com/ is available on a pay-per-view basis … Richard Abel (the publisher) makes no apologies: He sees no logic in giving back to the community. While virtually every paper in the New York Metroploitan Area gives something back to the community the Abel's want you to pay and pay and pay.

It’s a minor trend for newspapers to go to paid subscriptions, and contrary to the myth, enough readers will pay for content to make such a move profitable. But paid subscriptions are not the only way for a newspaper to make money online, and, in the long run, is probably curtailing potentially larger profits available to a free-content site.

It is also a myth that online news sites are not making money. Many, many sites are making money. In fact, it has become so easy to make money online for a newspaper site, that the only news sites not making money are only doing so because of poor management, not because putting local news online is a bad business model. There is no reason to resort to paid subscriptions to make money.

So my problem with the greed of Richard Abel is that there is no logic in charging for content.

While it is possible to turn a profit charging for access, you greatly restrict the size of your audience, and there are bigger profits to be made from money-making applications that rely on aggregated eyeballs. There are numerous ways to repackage and upsell classified ads and featured ads, there are online auctions, and many local newspapers have found great success in banner advertising and building custom Web sites. When you restrict your audience size through paid subscriptions, you take all of those options off the table.

So, in short, I don’t agree with the way the way Richard & Bernie Abel are running their online operations.