An Open Letter to the News-Gazette
Dear John & Mike,
I wanted to take this opportunity to share some of my concerns regarding the News-Gazette’s (“NG”) approach to online content, which seems to have shifted following the roll out of the new website. I’m speaking from a personal perspective as a long-time online reader and a recent print subscriber, and from a professional perspective as a member of the communications team at the University of Illinois College of Business. I don’t pretend to fully understand the economics of the newspaper industry, so I will try and explain some of the issues I run into as an online consumer instead of offering suggestions re: pricing models.
1. Loss of Archived Articles
This to me is just a huge loss. Here at the College of Business we exhaustively compile links to local and national articles that mention our students, faculty and staff. For faculty, in particular, it is very important for them to keep track of their media mentions. We have a news system where links to these news articles are displayed as part of their faculty profiles (e.g., http://www.business.uiuc.edu/facultyprofile/In_The_News.aspx?ID=239). In the past the NG put articles behind a pay wall after a few weeks, which was fine b/c you still provided an excerpt with the option to purchase full content. That satisfied our purposes, even if it wasn’t ideal. Now we don’t even get a link b/c you most likely haven’t put the article online at all. Furthermore, every article we’ve linked to in the past from faculty profiles is now broken - we can’t even dig through your archive to find a “new” correct link. Those articles have simply disappeared. Wow.
We send out a monthly newsletter to 20,000+ recipients and routinely link directly to NG articles. In the most recent edition (after the new NG site launched) we linked to two articles, which resulted in 114 clickthroughs to your site. We track all of this, and this was a light month in terms of referrals to the NG website. If you continue to selectively publish articles we might not have anything to link to.
2. Links are Online Currency
I can only guess, but I assume a decision was made to place a much higher dollar value on the # of print subscribers than on the # of pageviews. If you restrict the content available online, then perhaps people will be forced to become print subscribers in order to consume that content? I don’t think that is a sustainable practice, but even if it is it only works on a local level. The audience we share your online articles with is extremely broad geographically, with the majority of our readers outside the local market. You could never get these folks to subscribe to the print edition, but we sure could send some eyeballs to your site.
Additionally, if you do not place all of your content online you are preventing it from becoming viral in any way. How can I share an article with colleagues if it is found only in the print edition? I can’t, and as a result your articles become less relevant in a world where links are a critical measurement of influence. What is a major component of Google Page Rank? The number of inbound links. Instead of acting as a hub of vibrant discussion, you become a gatekeeper of content. No, these days you cannot expect the discussion to happen on your site (it happens on Twitter & Facebook instead). Yes, there are economic ramifications that no one seems to have solved yet.
3. Damaging Online Reputation
This is the most puzzling issue for me. You have developed, in my opinion, the most robust and well respected local presence on Twitter via your official account and those of your individual reporters. I see you developing a more engaged presence on Facebook as well. It is very difficult to establish and sustain the kind of community you have on these networks. However, this kind of innovation does not carry over to your site b/c of the limited content. Not long ago I read a reporter’s Twitter update encouraging everyone to read their article in the print edition of that day’s paper. I couldn’t believe I was reading that. Without the ability to link to their material the reporters seem to be extremely limited in what they can discuss online. Sure, they can source leads, but content is king. As feedback increasingly moves online, these are also the people fielding angry reactions to the new website etc. It seems that it puts them in the incredibly awkward position of trying to reach out to readers in interesting ways, but then having to explain why significant changes were made to the NG’s online content strategy.
I view the NG as a vital resource for the community - one that I want to see thrive and succeed. That’s one reason why I recently became a print subscriber even though my preferred method of reading is online. I know there was a bit of a backlash when the new site was rolled out. Personally, I don’t care about the design; I care about the content, and access to that content.
Thanks for the chance to vent.
Regards,
Todd Sweet
