Banjo Jones calls our attention to this Wall Street Journal blog post, in which Steven Swartz, president of Hearst newspapers (which include our Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News), indicates that Heart newspapers plan to start charging for some online content, and charging print subscribers even more (for a shrinking product). Here’s an excerpt from Swartz’s memo:
We believe we must begin to provide greater differentiation between the content of our free Web sites and the content of our paid product, be that paid product read in print, on a digital device like Amazon’s Kindle, or online. This doesn’t mean we wall off our Web sites behind a paid barrier. Our sites must continue to be the superior and dominant free Web sites in their markets. This means they must offer the best in breaking news, staff and reader blogs, community databases and photo galleries. In fact, we need to expand the number of reporters, editors and photographers who are running a truly great blog, creating a rich dialogue of opinion and data sharing. We must do a far better job of reaching out to prominent citizens in our communities, those who already have a blog and those who don’t, and providing them a prominent platform to state their views. We must develop a rich network of correspondents to help us grow the deepest hyper-local community microsites in our markets. We must do a better job of linking to other great sources of content in our communities. And we must put staff resources behind building those channels of interest that have the greatest potential: those built around pro sports teams, moms and high school sports, to name a few. Exactly how much paid content to hold back from our free sites will be a judgment call made daily by our management, whose mission should be to run the best free Web sites in our markets without compromising our ability to get a fair price from consumers for the expensive, unique reporting and writing that we produce each day.
We must continue to ask readers to pay more for their subscriptions. Our print subscribers don’t pay us enough today that we can say they are actually paying for content. Rather, we only ask readers to pay for a portion of the cost of printing the paper on newsprint and delivering it to the reader’s doorstep. We must gradually, but persistently, change this practice.
I have no objection in theory to paying for quality local content, since the Chronicle has the resources to cover local/state better than any other Houston news organization — stuff like critical urban, county, and state reporting, food and drink reviews, arts, and sports. Unfortunately, the local newspaper’s coverage of county affairs is spotty, cheerleading on urban issues like rail has sometimes displaced quality, watchdog reporting, and the fare offered by most of the sports and opinion columnists (and editorial board) is weak, making “local” harder to sell than it should be for any newspaper. I have no need for this newspaper’s rewrite of national, international, and entertainment stories covered by many other, higher-quality outlets, and would not want to pay for that.
What parts of the Chronicle would you be willing (or unwilling) to pay for to read online? Why (or why not)?
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