Monday, July 16, 2012

Warning: Whatever you do, don't call it a paywall

During this morning's second-quarter earnings conference call, CEO Gracia Martore told Wall Street analysts the following, according to Seeking Alpha's transcript:

"I'm sure that you've noticed that we insist on calling our plan an all access content subscription model while other publishers talk about paywalls. Well, why is that? Well, very simply put, our strategy is just simply different than theirs. In our strategy, content is king and the foundation of the model's success. Under the new plan, for a monthly fee, all subscribers in our markets will get access to all of our content on all digital platforms when and where they want it, all during the course of the day. And in addition to that, they'll have several home delivery options."

Now, can someone please explain how this is so different from what other publishers are doing?

24 comments:

  1. So the ad message flacks have tested various "We're raising the price" strategies, and "All Access Content" came out the winner. Good for them for not going along with the "Paywall" message. Probably a bright future in political communication for someone.

    Now that THAT is settled, you've got to have the product worth paying MORE for. A lot of times, as just mentioned, you can sell the SAME product if you just - wait for the buzzword - REBRAND it.

    The next time you go to the grocery store, check out the price of corn meal. Very inexpensive - a staple of basic cooking. If you watch any of the cooking shows on cable, you know that one of the buzz-foods is called "polenta", an Italian word. Polenta IS corn meal. Check out the price difference between the two.

    I really think local papers will have to do more for subs than just give access to content. For example, users of Redbox occasionally get an e-mail code good for a free movie. It's a lousy buck, and yet I'm very loyal to Redbox because they make the effort.

    So what can local papers offer? Check out your local radio stations. Chances are some have listener loyalty programs. Grocery stores have had their loyalty cards for many years. Some even give you 10 cents off a gallon of gas for every $100 you purchase at the store. THAT right there keeps me from going the extra five miles down the road to the less-expensive Walmart.

    Wall Drug in South Dakota built a brand on FREE WATER. Surely newspapers can figure out added value. Surely . . .

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  2. "Content is King"??? Has she read some of the papers lately? There's commonly excerpts from various Gannett papers mentioned on this blog that are pathetic. Poor, no or unrelated pictures. Bad grammar or just poor writing.

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  3. So it's just lipstick on the same pig?

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  4. Ours goes to eleven?

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  5. It isn't anything different. Gannett just wants to give it another useless nickname.

    Kindof like calling a newsroom a Local Information Center. Or calling coverage of high school graduations a Moment of Life.

    In other words, a bunch of useless corporate gobbledygook.

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  6. Insist on calling it whatever you want, Gracia, but it's a paywall.

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  7. The avoidance of the word "paywall" is comical.

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  8. Yes, lipstick on a pig (the concept, not the communicator, lol).

    They can't call it a paywall because every web-savvy person has figured out a way to get around it without playing.
    Whether you use Google Chrome and its Incognito mode, or Safari's Private mode, and/or clear your cache/cookies, etc., people are not going to pay for grade-school content.

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  9. They can call it what they want, but if it walks like a duck.....
    Just shows how marketers are running the company instead of journalists, and we'll be watching to see how many subscriptions are dropped. Anyone wanna start a pool on subscription losses?

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  10. Well, I guess readers at my site are not so smart. The web numbers have been trending down even more than at the beginning of the paywall launch, and the prevailing wisdom is that readers have hit their 10 stories for the month.

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  11. "...our strategy is just simply different than theirs. In our strategy, content is king and the foundation of the model's success."

    I see our CEO is reading from the teleprompter again...

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  12. Hey 8:33AM, maybe your readers AER smart, because they can barely find 10 stories/month worth reading?

    Smart people don't like to waste their time reading dreck.

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  13. Over my dead body will I sink low enough to call it a content subscription model or whatever other BS the suckers at the CP call it. Calling it anything other than what it is is the same as used cars being referred to as preowned. Ridiculous. Hey Gracia: IT'S A PAYWALL. Get over your pathetic self.

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  14. "Content is king"? Has she ever read the Fond du Lac Reporter? It runs press releases passed off as stories, even on the front page, and obits. That's pretty much the A section anymore.

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  15. It sure isn't an "all access content subscription" to me as I neither need nor want access to the print version, the electronic version or apps.

    Geez, I live in Colorado.

    I grew up in Rockland County though so for several years have read the Journal News on-line. So of course it IS a paywall, pure and simple, o matter waht you call it.

    I know the cookie trick but have only used it once since the JN went to the--ahem--paywall, just to see if it worked. I will not spend the money for the on-line only subscription, as there is little in the JN that is worth the cost.

    Yes, Patch is filled with fluff, but it does offer enough to keep me in touch with my roots and it's free, so I don't mind wading through the superfluous litter. And heck, the nearly as fluff-filled Journal News these days is only a small step above Patch anyway, with adequate litter of its own. Sure not worth $14 a month for the very few true Rockland articles I would want to read, even on what's supposed to be the "Rockland" page.

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  16. Proving once again that there is no topic so petty that it would fail to elicit the most mindbogglingly stupid complaints on this site.

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  17. It's not petty, 12:49, it's standard operating procedure for Gannett.

    Take an idea, change it's name, browbeat the employees over it and waste their time with it instead of doing some meaningful work, and then when it fails, forget about it 6 months from now.

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  18. 12:49, go read 1984 and stop at the word double speak. That's what Gracia is spewing and why people are upset. Content was king 10 years ago when the walls should have gone up and people would have been willing to pay for value. What do we have now? So-called content evolution as determined by focus groups who's favorite topic seem to run opposite to what the "most viewed" and "most e-mailed/commented on" counters on our own websites say.
    How can content be king when the ranks of content providers has dwindled to bare bones? Answer me that one

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  19. Reading numbers on the daily page views and how many folks are using the tablets for the paper I work at, daily page views have dropped about 40 percent from the pre-paywall pageviews and tablet page views after an initial spike have gone down.

    Reader comments on stories are nearly non-existent.

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  21. "In our strategy, content is king and the foundation of the model's success."

    This is what happens when an accountant takes over the company.

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  22. What we're not calling a paywall is what the grocery stores don't call the checkout lanes. Screw the readers who bitch about having to pay and we'll take the better demographics that will come with people who can afford luxuries like being well informed.

    If we can just find some way to create content out of nothing, it will be a license to coin money!

    (not folding money, mind you, but we have to destroy the industry to save it.)

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