I’ve been in McCall a few months now and have been giving a fair amount of thought to the local paper, The Star-News. (And not just “Why is it called that, anyway?”)
Here’s where I’m going with this post — and I love to say that I reserve the right to get smarter. The Star-News is only a physical paper, as in, there’s no “online” version of the entire paper. The paper comes out once a week; every Thursday. The paper has no real competition. One hundred miles away, in Boise, there’s the Idaho Statesman, which I presume a fair number of people in McCall take (or read online), but as far as getting “local” McCall news, The Star-News is the only game in or out of town.
An aside: For me, taking a physical paper is a real negative, but it’s currently the only option. I would much rather read my news online and avoid the waste associated with printed papers, not to mention extra trips to the recycling center. I don’t think that I’m alone.
I’m no printing expert, but physical papers have to be expensive relative to publishing online. I suppose that the the Seattle P-I’s recent cancellation of it’s printed papers is a decent example to point to on the subject. Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware of the pressures that are currently facing papers across the nation, which is part of the reason why I’m bothering to write this post.
So here’s my question. Could The Star-News augment their current model with an online version of the paper? We’ve seen that the paid, online paper businesses is tough, but my hypothesis is that it’s made tough due to competition. In a competitive market, you have to be a really special paper to command a subscription fee for online news. Like Wall Street Journal special. Look at the New York Times. They flirted with a paid model, but ultimately abandoned it and went back to free. The New York Times is a great paper, but it’s not WSJ great. It seems that the NYTimes experiment proved that people are not brand loyal when it comes to getting their news as long as there is a reasonable substitute.
But The Star-News… Are there viable alternatives for getting McCall news? Not that I’m aware of. The Idaho Statesman doesn’t touch the kind of stories that The Star-News runs. So, what would happen if The Star-News launched a full-online version of the paper? If it were a free version, it would presumably cannibalize their print sales. I have no idea what percentage of their revenues come from advertising vs. paper sales, but if the paper sales are an important revenue stream, I suspect that upsetting the revenue mix would be very disconcerting in the short term, even if it were a necessary move in the long run. On the flip side, one could argue that if there was heavy cannibalization, it would prove there is a real market for the paper to be online. At that point, the trick would be to figure out how to monetize it with advertising.
And what would happen if the online paper was PAID? As in for a fee. Launching an online paper wouldn’t be a small project, but could The Star-News pick up additional readers – with either a free or paid model? I suspect they could pick up a lot of readers with an online offering. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it, but I’m sure there are a lot of people that simply don’t want a physical paper. Not earth shattering numbers at the local level, but when I think about all of the vacation homes in the area, I’ve got to wonder what percentage of those folks would like to be able to read The Star-News without the hassle of dealing with a physical subscription. These are folks that already get a local paper for their primary residence, and the thought of adding another sometimes-read paper to the pile isn’t palatable. But they do have a vested interest in the area, they pay lots of property tax, and would love to be able to stay informed if it were more convenient.
And here it comes, the SEO angle. Others, smarter than I, have argued that newspapers are missing out on a golden opportunity to reinvent themselves and jump mightily into the Local Search business. Page after page of locally targeted content equals SEO prowess. For a free, online paper, this is a no-brainer. The trick with a for-fee model would be to figure out a way to provide enough content for the search engines to crawl and index, despite having the site be predominantly under lock and key for paying subscribers only. There are reasonable ways to solve for this problem. If executed properly, The Star-News could become an SEO powerhouse in Valley County. With that strength would come locally targeted search traffic and the opportunity for increased advertising revenues and other revenue streams. I’ve got more thoughts on the subject if you’re interested in starting a conversation.
But the end game is this: News-consumption habits are changing, and in the not-so-distant-future, the majority of people are going to want to get their news online. It’s time to start preparing for the future.
Cheers,
Scott
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Update – 6/18/09
Here’s a screenshot of a possible artifact from the now-defunct, online newspaper, the McCall Chronicle. R.I.P.
I just came across this post and better late than never…
A valiant attempt was made by the McCall Chronicle. The site is now down but the site was well received within a small minority. It never gained traction despite great content. It was also started by a cyclist from Seattle!
@Jonny on the Spot. Very interesting, thanks for the tip regarding the McCall Chronicle. How long ago did the paper/site get taken down? I was able to find what appears to be a search result of an old page in Google that I’ll post for kicks. Funny that it was run by a cyclist from Seattle. Maybe I could amount to something too if I stopped focusing on hamburger reviews, weird weather trends and infantile charts & graphs!