Monday, March 07, 2011

Dubow: Gannett's still experimenting with paywalls

Gannett expects to continue experimenting with existing paywalls at three newspapers before the company decides whether to expand their use, CEO Craig Dubow told Bloomberg News today.

“We’re going to see more of this until we can get exact a model as possible. We want to be able to do this and do it once,'' he said.

Dubow's remarks came during an interview about the company's just-launched corporate brand campaign.

GCI is among media companies searching for ways to create paying customers out of people who now access news for free on the Internet. The New York Times Co. will start charging readers for online access “very shortly,” Chairman and Publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. said last week.

Since early July, GCI has had paywalls of varying types at newspapers in Tallahassee, Fla.; Greenville, S.C., and St. George, Utah.

5 comments:

  1. Didn't Saridakis say last May that pay walls will not work. Why are they wasting time.

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  2. How do paywalls hurt traffic? Check Greenville News vs. much smaller nearby sister paper Asheville: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/greenvilleonline.com+citizen-times.com/

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  3. I ran a similar comparison between
    the Greenville News and its main local TV competition. The non-Gannett TV station easily dwarfs the Gannett-owned newspaper.

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  4. I think we can take this continued "experimentation" to mean that people aren't willing to pay for the Gannett brand Web sites.

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  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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