With the exception of the Star Tribune’s Access Vikings, neither Twin Cities daily has entered the pay wall era, and it won’t happen tomorrow. But there’s a new and interesting connection between the local rivals and potential pay-up methods.
Late last year, Pioneer Press owner MediaNews Group announced a pay wall test at two small papers — one in York, Pennsylvania and the other in Chico, California. Last week, Bloomberg News revealed more details: Most content would remain free, but users would get “up to 25” premium articles a month before they’d have to pay up.
Also revealed: the pay wall provider, Journalism Online, whose Press+ platform is a universal account with seamless access to multiple sites.
Journalism Online’s co-founder is former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz … who happens to be a newly minted member of the Star Tribune’s board of directors.
And there’s this head-snapper on JO’s site, in answer to the frequently asked question “But can’t I get my news for free elsewhere?”:
Not necessarily, especially if what you want is reliable insight, not simply the headlines you can find everywhere. Whether it’s news from the town planning or school-board meeting, a corporate strategy retreat, the Vikings locker room, or a national-security briefing, it’s the content you have come to rely on your favorite online brands to provide.
… Vikings locker room? Awfully specific team reference there, folks!
Both Journalism Online spokeswoman Cindy Rosenthal and Strib spokesman Ben Taylor say absolutely no marriage has been made.
Says Rosenthal, “I think we should change that reference to ‘your favorite team’s locker room coverage’ to avoid any confusion.”
Taylor: “We’re clearly on the record as being keenly interested in generating consumer-based digital revenue. But we’re still in exploratory mode on how to do that best. Looking at options. Nothing definitive.”
Taylor adds that the Strib doesn’t even use Press+ for its current Vikings pay wall; that vendor is reg.net.
The MediaNews system may never arrive in St. Paul, and the Strib board may decide Crovitz’s method isn’t right. Besides, it’s still a huge, open question whether any of us will pony up for their “premium” fare. But it wouldn’t shock me that if the day comes, we’ll all get to know Press+.
It’s a struggle to find an online service worth paying for. Given the huge coverage devoted to the Vikings in the print paper (much of which I didn’t read), it was really hard to imagine what “Access Vikings” could have had to add. The other day, I received a reasonably priced over for a service that would deliver an online print-like version of the paper. But I already pay for a print version, I don’t need two. And besides offering a computerized print version seemed a step in the wrong direction. What computers should offer is something different from what their competitors, not the same thing only slightly worse. Say what you will about print, as print it works very well.
What the newspaper needs is a genius. Someone who can come up with a product different from what is currently failing financially, one that people are willing to pay for at a rate that newspapers or their successors can survive. I just don’t know what that product is, but as a lover of newspapers in all their version, I hope we find that new model soon, or the Tuesday morning advertisements are going to get a lot larger.