Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Poughkeepsie | Here's their paywall promotion

The Poughkeepsie Journal is promoting its new paywall with a 30-second video that, bizarrely, starts with a paid pre-roll. Plus, when viewed on the paper's site, it counts against a reader's free supply of articles before the paywall kicks in.



How is your site promoting its paywall? Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write jimhopkins[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the rail, upper right.

10 comments:

  1. We haven't said a word yet to readers, nor do editors talk about it to the workers.

    Right now on the site six of the top stories are dated March 12, and the last time a story from today was updated was 9 a.m. A quick scan of the forums shows some topics not touched for 326, 343, 411, and a whopping 1074 days. The one story that's under "most commented" has one comment.

    Why would anyone pay to view such a lackluster site?

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  2. Jim,

    Site housekeeping note. Tried to play the Poughkeepsie video. The Expedia pre-roll ad ran fine. But when the 30 second video/ad for the newspaper ran. No Sound. So, I went to the paper's website. Sound worked fine. But the ad isn't explaining the newspaper's paywall. Just a generic spot promoting the newspaper. I'm not in the print side of the business, but electronic media. The video looks like a stock video ad ALL Gannett newspapers will use as they roll out their paywall. I went to the Lafayette Journal Courier website (I live in Indiana). They have an ad that looks and sounds identical to Poughkeepsie. Only the logo for the newspaper is different and the journalist is a Journal Courier journalist. Again, the video just promotes the paper; not the importance of buying the paywall. Don't understand why these videos would be placed on the site to help promote buying into the paywall. I'm not in Gannett but I come to this site to read how clueless a major media company can be.

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  3. I'm guessing this promotional video wasn't shot with an Iphone.

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  4. I went to http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/section/subscription-options-learn-more and the video didn't have a preroll ad, nor did it count against the meter.

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  5. Embarrassing.

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  6. Huge drawback of gannett's centralized approach to everything. Local newsroom people need to have the ability to say, no this video is not quality enough to run a preroll ad first. All the user remembers is they made him watch an ad for crap on the other end

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  7. My local paper had a pie-and-soup fundraiser listed under the top local news banner.

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  8. Stu Shinske is presiding over an ever-shrinking empire. After selling the building, crowding into the third floor, laying off most of the staff and outsourcing the desk, who is left for Stu to scream at when he decides to rage over a story one of his three remaining reporters couldn't get to?

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  9. All you have to do is clear your cookies, and you get all your free views on the PJ website again. Their paywall doesn't work.

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  10. When PJ sold the building they arranged for either a 3 or 5 year lease for space on the 3rd floor, time will soon be up. I bet they move out and rent a crappy old IBM building and the physical work environment will be really lousy. They also own a warehouse where they used to distribute papers to some dealers. They could also move into that building if they still own it but agbain it's just an ugly eyesore warehouse type building, nothing like the original historic building Gannett made them sell and then rent space... This community newspaper has no community to read it, either in a few pages of print or online. There are so many other new FREE weeklies that have taken over the news and entertainment markets that PJ is useless.

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