Success of pay walls
at smaller papers is
good sign for print
Positive numbers at local dailies give hope to bigger players
such as New York Times, but recipe has not worked for all
; BY NAT IVES nives@adage.com
IF YOU WANT to know what paid content
on the web can do for newspapers’ paid
circulation, keep your eye on places such
as Lima, Ohio and Bend, Oregon. If pay
walls can’t make it in these environments, they probably can’t make it anywhere else.
The papers that are more likely to
catch your attention, of course, include
Rupert Murdoch’s Times of London,
which starts charging for full access to its
site in June; The New York Times, which
will charge its heaviest online readers
starting next year; and even the
Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era,
a mid-sized paper in Pennsylvania, in the
next few weeks hopes to start charging
out-of-towners who are heavy obituary
readers. “It’s roughly 5% of our page
views,” said Ernest Schreiber, online editor at LancasterOnline. “It seemed like it
was a significant amount of our readership but not so much that if we upset people that it would really damage the site.”
The Wall Street Journal and The
Financial Times have already proved that
readers will pay for standout business
news on the web, but if pay walls around
general-interest news work in London,
New York and Lancaster, Pa., maybe
they’ll work in many other places, too.
But the big questions about bigger
papers’ future on the web already have a
proving ground of sorts at much smaller
outlets that have already given paid content a go. It’s not that pay walls will definitely work in major metro areas if they
work in smaller markets, it’s that they
need to work in smaller markets if they’re
going to work in the majors.
“The newspapers that are going to
have the best advantage instituting the
pay walls are going to be the big national
guys with differentiating editorial like The
Wall Street Journal and some of the smaller guys that offer information that truly is
not available in other media,” said Randy
Novak, director of newspaper strategy at
NSA Media, a unit of the Interpublic
Group of Cos. that specializes in buying
local print media. “The ones that are going
to struggle, I think, are the ones that fall in
between, if they don’t provide something
that can’t be readily accessed elsewhere.”
So what are the odds for pay walls succeeding in, say, Boston or Chicago?
There’s some good news from the
Arkansas Democrat Gazette, the most
famous general-interest paper to main-
tain a pay wall around its website and
one that’s holding up nicely in print—its
average weekday circulation increased
2.7% to 185,222 over the six months
that ended in March, according to its
new report with the Audit Bureau of
Circulations. That includes 4,242 elec-
tronic editions, but paid print alone still
increased 2.3%. And that’s a large paper,
although it’s been charging since 2001,
so readers are used to it.
NEWSPAPERS’ PAID CIRCULATION
- 6.5 DAILIES WITH CIRCULATIONS BELOW 25,000
DAILIES WI TH ESTABLISHED PAY WALLS
+ 2.7 ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
-8.7 DAILY NEWSPAPERS
- 9.4%
DAILIES WITH
CIRCULATIONS
ABOVE 50,000
+2 NORWALKREFLECTOR
- 1.8 ELDORADONEWS-TIMES
- 2.8 THECITIZEN
- 3.9 THELIMANEWS
Source and notes: Newspapers’ paid circulation reports to the Audit Bureau of Circulations,
for editions excluding Sundays, covering the six months ending in March 2010 and compared against
the six months ending in March 2009. Total paid circulation includes electronic editions.
$34.95 per year. Back then, the Reflector
had been reporting circulation declines, a
3% drop to 8,866 for the six months ending in March 2008.
It’s true that some of the recent circu-
lation growth has come from cheaper
online-only subscriptions, and that print
advertising remains the most lucrative
revenue stream for newspapers, but the
Reflector’s print base might be smaller
still without the wall. “We absolutely
believe our print circulation would be
lower if we were providing full, free access
online,” said Andrew Prutsok, its publish-
er. “I couldn’t say how much.”
The wall might not be as effective if it
hadn’t made an important change along
the way. “At first we were putting up our
police log online every day for free,” Mr.
Prutsok said. “Our online paid was stuck
on about 140. When we took the police
news away, the paid online doubled.”
The Lima News, another Ohio paper,
just reported average Monday-through-
Friday paid circulation of 29,981, down
3.9% from 31,208.
That’s better than the average for
papers small or large, but publisher James
Shine doesn’t think the pay wall that
went live last August is playing a big role
one way or another. “My sense is that
people who like the printed product prefer
to get it that way, and those that like to
read us online do so because they are out
of town or it is more convenient for
them,” Mr. Shine said. “They seem to be
two pretty diverse groups.”
The biggest factor lately has been the
paper’s own pricing, according to Mr.
Shine, who noted that it raised its news-
stand price in March 2009 and increased
home-delivery prices last June, common
tactics nowadays for newspapers looking
to shore up their finances. “Both of those
actions accelerated our rate of print copy
The Intelligencer
Journal-Lancaster New
Era, a mid-sized
paper in
Pennsylvania, in
the next few
weeks hopes to
start charging
out-of-towners
who are heavy
obituary readers.
“It’s roughly 5%
of our page
views,” said
Ernest Schreiber,
online editor at
Lancaster
Online.
For more news
and information
on the continuing
pay-wall debate,
go to
AdAge.com/
mediaworks
GOOD NEWS FROM ARKANSAS: The most famous
general-interest paper to maintain a pay wall
around itssite increased weekdaycirculation
2.7% over the six months ended in March.
decline,” he said.
In the Florida Keys and Key West,
you can read much of the Citizen free on
KeysNews.com, but full access and the
PDF electronic edition have required a
print or online subscription since 2006.
The Crime Report, for example, is not for
free riders in Key West either.
Back in 2006, The Citizen reported
average Monday-through-Saturday paid
circulation of 10,183 for the six months
ending that March. In the new numbers
out last week, it reported Monday-through-Saturday paid circulation of
9,547, down 2.8% from the equivalent
period a year earlier. Those totals included 1,216 electronic-only subscribers, up
52.4% from 798 a year earlier.
It’s a stronger performance than
many, many newspapers—even small
ones—but Publisher Paul Clarin said he
wasn’t sure whether the pay strategy is
affecting his paid print circulation. “We
don’t operate in a vacuum,” he said. “If a
customer wants to buy online, we sell it to
them. About 800 of our subscribers who
are online live between Key West and
Marathon, where we offer home deliv-
ery. So, it’s the customer’s choice.”
And the Bend Bulletin in Oregon just
reported a 34% increase in weekday paid
circulation, but largely because this year it
took advantage of Audit Bureau rules
allowing newspapers to count subscribers
twice if they pay extra for content on the
web. The print edition costs $10.50 per
month, print plus the electronic edition
costs $11 per month and the electronic
edition alone costs $8 per month.
Leaving the officially sanctioned dou-ble-counting aside, print home-delivery
subscribers notched a modest gain of less
than 1%.
“The rationale of being able to use
your website to increase your ad revenue
through increased traffic simply has not
proven accurate,” said Keith Foutz, corporate circulation and operations director at
Western Communications, which owns
the Bulletin.
Free content online has instead made
it easier for people to stop buying print,
eroding ad revenue for the print edition in
the process, Mr. Foutz said. “Do we need
to do a better job of adapting and opening
See SMALL WALL on Page 119
