Quote:
Originally Posted by Harmon
We all know that this isn't going to work out. The question is, why not? I mean, we are willing to buy a newspaper at a dollar a day, so why not a webpaper?
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1) Newspapers have some use when you're done reading them. You can give it to someone else to read (lots of that on the commuter trains), use the paper to pad things for shipping, use it for craft projects or to drain foods after cooking. Admittedly, these are all small uses -- but real, and internet access (geeze, not even *downloadable* internet access) doesn't provide them.
2) You can cut out & keep interesting articles from physical newspapers--clip the photo of your cousin's school project, save the sports columns about your favorite team, magnet one of the cartoons to your fridge until everyone in the house has seen it. While you can, technically, print-and-save online newspaper articles (unless they're taking weird measures to try to prevent that), it doesn't have the same appeal--and besides, then you have to pay for ink & paper in addition to access to the content.
3) Always a problem when you take something that used to be free, and start charging for it. The sales pitch has to be a lot more than "we can't afford to keep giving this away." They'll have to offer something *extra*, and fast--and if that something isn't appealing to most of their readers, those readers will find news & editorial content elsewhere.
4) I suspect they *vastly* overrate the login, much less paywall, barrier to new readers. Convincing someone to fork over a dollar (or a pound?) for a single issue of a newspaper is easy; they know what they can expect from a newspaper. (Also, odds are they can find someone else who reads the paper first--and ask for yesterday's copy--to decide if they like it.) Convincing that same person to fork over the same amount of money for 1-day access to a website involves convincing them that (1) your web design skills are decent, (2) your content is worth reading, (3) your ads are not annoying enough that they want to leave the site, (4) your site is coded for easy reading *on their browser,* and (5) they have time to devote to reading it
today, since they can't come back tomorrow and finish the parts they didn't get to.
5) Privacy issues. When I buy a physical newspaper, I'm anonymous. Buying online means giving the vendor my name, email address & credit card info. I'm a lot more cautious about buying online than at a store; I have to think not just "do I want this?" but also "how much am I willing to tell this company about me?"
All those are generally considered subconsciously; the conscious thought tends to be something like, "login WHAT? Hell with that; I bet slashdot has *something* interesting..."