Buffalo News going to use paywall for Bills stuff

[\GoBillsInDallas/]

http://buffalonews.com/2017/09/06/introducing-bnblitz-com-faq-exclusive-buffalo-bills-coverage-obsessive-fan/

 

Sabres stuff to go to paywall soon?

[inkman]

What the hell is pay wall? Paul Wall's long lost brother?

[LTS]

It means you have to pay for a plan to obtain access.

 

Good for the BN.  It'll fail miserably.

[PromoTheRobot]

Makes no difference to me. I won't read them ever.

[inkman]

It means you have to pay for a plan to obtain access.

 

Good for the BN. It'll fail miserably.

Ah. That means I'll hit the little ???? on my phone and either Google the topic and read it for free elsewhere or just forget about it and move on.

[WildCard]

It means you have to pay for a plan to obtain access.

 

Good for the BN.  It'll fail miserably.

100%

 

There are so many ways to get around pay walls anyways. It's a terrible idea, all it does is turn away your viewers and your advertisement revenue suffers

[Taro T]

The Snooze thinks people will pay money to gripe about the incompetence of both the Bills AND their opinion columnists? :huh:

 

It IS still just medical marijuana that's legal in NYS, right? The publisher must have some SERIOUS glaucoma to come up w/ that one.

[Eleven]

Yeah, $3/mo. to read the likes of Gleason and Sullivan.  I don't think so.  I can get whatever Bills coverage I need from elsewhere.  (Or just read the paper in the lunchroom at work.)

 

I don't understand how newspapers can't "make it work" in the Internet age.  Radio survived TV, then satellite radio, then Internet streaming.  How come newspapers can't figure it out?

[dudacek]

Yeah, $3/mo. to read the likes of Gleason and Sullivan.  I don't think so.  I can get whatever Bills coverage I need from elsewhere.  (Or just read the paper in the lunchroom at work.)

 

I don't understand how newspapers can't "make it work" in the Internet age.  Radio survived TV, then satellite radio, then Internet streaming.  How come newspapers can't figure it out?

TV and radio have been hit by the net the same way newspapers have.

Unlike newspapers, they don't spend a lot of time writing about it.

 

Also, pretty much every media organization with any future these days is multi-platform - radio does video, TV does print and everyone is online.

[Eleven]

TV and radio have been hit by the net the same way newspapers have.

Unlike newspapers, they don't spend a lot of time writing about it.

 

Also, pretty much every media organization with any future these days is multi-platform - radio does video, TV does print and everyone is online.

 

Exactly.  But newspapers can't seem to figure it out.  WGRZ doesn't charge me to read its news online.  It doesn't have a limited number of articles per month.  Yet somehow it is able to survive.

[dudacek]

If you are charging for info in this marketplace, it better be special.

Edited September 6, 2017 by dudacek

[Taro T]

If you are charging for info in this marketplace, it better be special.

Anything written by the mustaschioed twerp is, by definition, "special." Doesn't mean many (any?) will pay to read it.

[Norcal]

This made me laugh

[pi2000]

If they offer X number of "free articles" per month, use Chrome incognito mode to get unlimited free articles... or just turn off cookies for their site usually works.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

If they offer X number of "free articles" per month, use Chrome incognito mode to get unlimited free articles... or just turn off cookies for their site usually works.

 

And why would anyone want to go through all that?  

[SwampD]

Yeah, $3/mo. to read the likes of Gleason and Sullivan.  I don't think so.  I can get whatever Bills coverage I need from elsewhere.  (Or just read the paper in the lunchroom at work.)

 

I don't understand how newspapers can't "make it work" in the Internet age.  Radio survived TV, then satellite radio, then Internet streaming.  How come newspapers can't figure it out?

 

This is why they can't make it work.

100%

 

There are so many ways to get around pay walls anyways. 

 

If they offer X number of "free articles" per month, use Chrome incognito mode to get unlimited free articles... or just turn off cookies for their site usually works.

People don't even bat an eye at stealing content.

[Eleven]

And why would anyone want to go through all that?  

 

It's really easy.  It's one click.

[Lanny]

100%

 

There are so many ways to get around pay walls anyways. It's a terrible idea, all it does is turn away your viewers and your advertisement revenue suffers

I won't pay for their product because I don't like it, but I found this interesting regarding the Athletic and their paywall structure:

 

https://theathletic.com/40690/2017/02/27/letter-from-the-editor-why-the-athletic-has-a-paywall/

 

 

Journalists are not losing their jobs because they are bad at what they do. The No. 1 killer of newspapers and websites – and radio and television appear to be next – is ad rates, in print and online. As Facebook and Google corner the ad market, and companies increasingly turn to social avenues to promote themselves, ad rates are dropping, often at exceptional rates.

In the (recent) past, you could attempt to make money online by going for scale – a high number of clicks – but that is becoming increasingly difficult. Even a very high-end website, like the New York Times, has online ad rates of about $8 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). Most newspapers and websites are much lower than that – and the number seems to be falling every year.

 

Even very well read stories for large outlets may only generate $75 or $100 in revenue online. Not enough to pay a writer for a day’s work, let alone add in an editor, or any other costs associated with a large company producing content.

That, on a basic level, is why newspapers like the New York Times and The Globe and Mail are pursuing a subscription model. They have to in order to produce the content that makes those brands what they are. They have done the math that shows getting even two or three subscribers for a story is worth more than 20,000 hits.

Edited September 6, 2017 by Lanny

[Eleven]

This is why they can't make it work.

 

People don't even bat an eye at stealing content.

 

But with other, non-newspaper, media outlets, there is no NEED to steal content because they are able to make it free to read and still make money.  Why can't newspapers figure it out?

[Sabres Fan in NS]

It's really easy.  It's one click.

 

;)

 

I know that, but it is still way too much effort for the BN.

[SwampD]

But with other, non-print media outlets, there is no NEED to steal content because they are able to make it free to read and still make money.  Why can't newspapers figure it out?

I think my fix is more accurate. All print media is hurting. Makes me think that it's different and they make there money more on the on the distribution.

[WildCard]

If they offer X number of "free articles" per month, use Chrome incognito mode to get unlimited free articles... or just turn off cookies for their site usually works.

Bingo

[Eleven]

I think my fix is more accurate. All print media is hurting. Makes me think that it's different and they make there money more on the on the distribution.

 

I had originally written non-print, but there are too many magazines with free articles online.  It's a newspaper problem.  

[SwampD]

I had originally written non-print, but there are too many magazines with free articles online.  It's a newspaper problem.  

I think newspapers are just the last to fall. There are one tenth the number of magazines right now than there were when the intertubes showed up.

Edited September 6, 2017 by SwampD

[nfreeman]

This ties into something I was wondering about -- whether The Buffalo Star (a new online publication covering Buffalo sports -- e.g. they've just posted a really good article on Risto that was linked to in the Risto thread) is viable.

 

The Star is subscriber-only and is $4 per month or $30 per year.  It features good writers that will be familiar to many people here (Dave Davis, Kevin Oklobzija, Matthew Coller, etc.), and I'm virtually certain its written content will be substantially better than that of any other WNY publication.  (Certainly the Risto article fits that description.)

 

And yet I'm pretty skeptical that there are enough Buffalo sports fans who are going to be willing to pony up $30 per year to make it viable -- even combined with advertising, which I also think won't deliver much revenue. 

 

I hope I'm wrong.