Free site versus locked down - TOTALLY WRONG QUESTION!

Welcome to the world of snake oil sales and online gimmicks. Everyone seems to have a solution, or at least an opinion as to how the newspaper industry will ultimately monetize the web; the problem with all the current solutions on the table is that none of them has really panned out. Yes, some ideas are certainly doing better and have stronger merit than others; however none offer the reward large enough to change the rules of the game. Along with this, we are seeing great new technology coming online that offers at least a glimmer of dim hope, but once again, no real hard evidence or better put, dollars attached, that make any meaningful difference.

I am sure some idea or technology will come along at some point in the future that can offer more than a glimmer of financial hope; but until then, if things don't change rapidly with our current business model, we'll continue to see the erosion of what was once a great industry. That said, what can we do now to at least slow the erosion that has overtaken the industry?

First, let's stop arguing over if offering our content for free online or if locking down the website is the correct course of action; that is the TOTALLY wrong argument or question to begin with. No one argues that giving away for free what costs us a arm and leg to create is shear business stupidity and destined to fail. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that. Now, before all those proponents of giving everything away for free rise up in arms, let me add to this statement. I am NOT saying that we lock down our websites and charge for the content, that strategy is as gravely flawed and will also leave the emperor exposed.

A side point that needs to be pointed out however. We can theorize all we want about impact of locking, not locking and so forth, however it should be noted how Walter Hussman of the Arkansas Gazette has chosen to address this issue. His process of not giving away for free what he produces at a great cost is hard to argue with from a circulation perspective as his results show a 10 year fairly stable circulation number. Yes, he has experienced some ups and downs, but most newspapers would give an arm or leg for the stabilization of the circulation numbers he has managed to maintain in his core market.

That said, I still believe that we are having the entirely wrong argument and Walters model will substantiate that. Despite the great circulation record, I suspect that Walter is in the same boat as the rest of us and whether his site is locked down or not really may not matter as his ad revenue and thus entire business model is still bleeding profusely. That said, we must look beyond the circulation impact, because despite the circulation you may be able to maintain; the real financial pressure comes from the perception of the advertisers coupled with the current economic meltdown which is accelerating the financial perfect storm. So what do we do?

First, I would begin by changing our current print /online relationship model and moving away from the mirror philosophy we currently embrace. I would start by eliminating a few items from the online site that appear in print. Examples might include, but aren't limited to cutting out the police blotters and crime scene, change the stories to offer different length and versions of the stories online versus in print and vice-versa. In a nutshell, give people a reason to visit both the print and online products. How you go about doing that may vary by market, but you must give them viable reasons to visit both products, having a mirrored product really offers no incentive to do that. But one thing Walter's model does give us is strong evidence or credence that having information only available in print and not online can help stem circulation declines.

Secondly, we must understand that alone won't be nearly enough. I would start finding new things to post online that would be interesting to our online visitors. I would find cool links to various topics that may be of interest in your market. Create a Youtube clip of the day, become a local aggregating site of non-print information. Create a blog roll exclusively for local bloggers, have your reporters and editors visit the chat forums and participate a few minutes each day. I heard one idea where you even promote the reporters and newsroom folks as experts in certain areas. Anything that provides audience interaction will be a great addition to developing the community you need to harvest. Many aggregating sites do quite well financially, why not take that model and be the local aggregating site everyone turns to?

Thirdly, expounding on the previous job of creating a robust community within your community that isn't necessarily tied to your newspaper. While content is king, the type of content is critical. We need to embrace citizen contributions to our site, whether that be as citizen journalists or just community sounding boards, the fact is that people love to see people in their community online. One need look no further than OhMyNews.com out of South Korea, started as a citizen journalist website that morphed into a spin-off print product. Oh and by the way, that spin-off web print became the 4th largest print product in South Korea after only a few years. I believe that online offers unlimited opportunities to create a community no one else in your community has the ability or bandwidth to do; we need to capitalize on this opportunity before it might be to late.

All that said, I don't pretend to have all the answers to this serious issue, I only am willing to throw out ideas and give things a trial to see what might resonate with our community. I get a kick out of those still clinging to the hope that more research and focus groups coupled with a task force will solve the problem; hope they unfortunately learn to late makes a very poor business strategy. The real keys are the ability to move quickly, the ability to adapt to market changes on a dime as well as the ability to change and follow one's intuition are paramount to succeeding in today's economic climate. We can all hope for the day focus groups and task forces are back in style, but until then it is a whole new world in which we are forced to operate, so let's get on with the task at hand.