You may recall a previous HarfordNow post entitled "The Aegis Charges What For Online News?". In that post, I expressed my outrage that our county newspaper charges full subscription rates to access their articles online, and even charges an extra fee for access if you already subscribe to the print edition. Let’s take the issue a little farther…

As a consumer, let me start by saying that I do not subscribe to any newspapers. I get my daily news online. I read the Baltimore Sun, The Examiner, and a collection of over a hundred RSS feeds that I subscribe to, which include news sites and blogs. I may pick up a copy of the Aegis or Record at a local convenience store from time to time, but this is not a common occurrence. As a blogger, I often use articles I find online as sources for posts here on HarfordNow and other blogs that I write. I always link back to the original article and often commend the writer. Unfortunately, this isn’t practiced everywhere. And I know print newspapers aren’t going anywhere, even though their subscriber lists are diminishing. They will be around at least until the 10th version of the iPhone comes out in 2020, which will feature a pull out Venetian screen with larger and clearer text (thanks to Scott Adams of Dibert fame).

It’s easy to say "everyone else is doing it" when it comes to providing newspaper content online for free. Both the Baltimore Sun and The Examiner have reporters dedicated to covering Harford County, and the articles are freely accessible on their website. They even have specific sections for Harford County in their site navigation. But the fact is that they do not provide as in-depth of coverage as our local papers, the Aegis and Record. Does this mean our local papers should be able to charge a premium for accessing their content on the web? (Let’s ignore the ridiculous premise that they charge current print subscribers an extra $10.50 a year to web access. You will be hard-pressed to find many examples of other news organizations pulling that stunt.) The simple answer to the question is yes, they should be able to charge for online access. They can charge $1000/year if they wanted to. It’s their business. However, I didn’t say it was good business.

The media world today has no boundaries. Google, along with other search engines, has completely changed the way we access content. But when you keep your content behind a paywall, like the Aegis does, your articles cannot be indexed by search engines. Take for example the story about the dumping in the Fallston Crossing development that we featured here at HarfordNow. Both the Examiner and the Aegis also covered the issue. Entering "Fallston Crossing" into Google brings back the HarfordNow story third, the Examiner story fourth, and Bel Air News and Views post talking about it sixth. Where is the Aegis article? Google doesn’t know it exists, and neither does anyone else searching for it online.

It’s obvious that the Aegis does not value their web strategy (if they even have one), so why should they care if their articles aren’t being found in search results? Because they are losing out on an enormous and growing revenue stream, online advertising. How enticing would it be to a local home builder to have their advertisements show next to a story about Fallston Crossing? Web visitors who arrived at the Aegis’ Fallston Crossing story could have been searching for Fallston real estate, Fallston homes, Fallston development, etc. All of these searches could potentially lead visitors to this article. If it was open to everyone, that is.

This theory is exactly why the New York Times decided to open up access to their Times Select product. The NYT also opened up access to their archives for free. While it is unfair to compare a small county newspaper to one of the biggest media corporations in the world, the same general principles apply. Here is a quote from Vivian Schiller, SVP and GM of NYTimes.com that can be found at PaidContent.org:

The change is because of what’s happened in the internet in the past
two years—particularly the power of search.” She added later: “Think
about this recipe—millions and millions of new documents, all seo’d,
double-digit advertising growth.” The Times expects “the scale and the
power of the revenue that would come from that over time” to replace
the subscriptions revenue and then some.

I think it would be a fair assumption that opening up access to the articles and selling online advertising would provide more revenue to the Aegis than they currently receive from online subscribers. I understand that there will be startup costs to create the infrastructure and sales teams for this new online component, but this is inevitable, and the costs today are sure to be lower than in the future.

Keeping your articles behind a paywall also severely limits the amount of interaction that is possible with the public that you are serving. They say there are two sides to every story, right? Well not at the Aegis and Record. Sure, you have an editorial section, but is every submittal published? How do you decide which to print and which to simply throw away? Online newspapers are slowly picking up the lead from blogs by allowing comments and rankings to help build community. The Baltimore Sun and Examiner both allow reader interaction through comments and forums. People love to debate and give their opinion on local issues. Allowing comments with articles will bring readers back to your site over and over again and allows them to have a say in what’s going on.

So where does this leave the journalists? Opening up their stories for free to the world is bound to diminish their authority and result in rampant plagiarism, right? I really don’t think so. As a journalist, you are still the trusted source for our news. Your work is backed up by multiple sources and is verifiable, accurate, and scrubbed by editors to ensure readability. Blogs are basically just opinion, but strong opinions that need to be heard. In the end, I don’t feel that bloggers are real threats to journalists, and journalists are not threats to bloggers. The perfect local new media entity would leverage them both, working together in synergy (not Synagro).

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