Replies

[NDReporter]

Please discuss.

Website publication time change

Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010 8:35 PM CDT
Out of respect to our print edition subscribers and their committment to using The News-Dispatch as their local news source, The News -Dispatch website will now be updated at 5 p.m. daily. While we value our online readers, it's only fair that our loyal, paying customers of The News-Dispatch print edition have top priority when it comes to reading the news. For subscription information, call 219-874-7211.

[Dave]

my comment from the parallel "Yesterday's News Tomorrow" thread:

I was wondering if the Herald Argus had announced the same policy, so I did a search on their site for "announcement" and came across this interesting article:

http://www.heraldargus.com/articles/2010/0...f5791557394.txt

Front Announcement

Published: Tuesday, July 27, 2010 12:48 PM CDT
this is where your content goes.

Which seemed to be some kind of glitch, but I scrolled down to the comments section where some online readers were taking the H A to task for the quality of their online content. The most interesting comment was from H A Executive Editor Chris Schable ("Tell your" was one of the previous posters in the comments section):

H-A Executive Editor Chris Schable wrote on Jul 28, 2010 11:20 AM:
" "Tell your."
Just correcting some false information.
First of all, thank you for your continued support of the Herald-Argus, whether it be through subscribing to the print edition or the visiting the website.
1. We do update on the weekends. We do not have a Sunday publication, so once Saturday's news goes live, we don't post news again until Monday (now 5 p.m.).
2. Yes, advertisers on the website are paying for traffic, but advertisers in the print edition are as well. Giving the product away for free online makes our print product less valuable.
3. I would love to be able to have comments update immediately, but unfortunately, we have readers that can't control themselves when leaving comments. The amount and level of racism, sexism, vulgarity, baseless accusations, etc., is shocking and we can not trust commentors to follow the guidelines we've put in place.
We update them when we can. Remember, we're putting out what amounts to a small novel every day and approving comments on the website take a backseat to news gathering.
4. Newspapers are not failing due to this policy. In fact, there are more newspaper readers now than any time in history. The problem is, newspapers are giving away content for free online and that is where it is being read. We're the only industry in the world that pays to create a product and them simply gives it away. In some cases, like ours, we were giving away our product for free before it actually arrived to the homes of paying subscribers. That is a recipe for failure.
I'm willing to discuss this further. Give me a call or drop me an e-mail at cschable@heraldargus.com "

[Southsider2k12]

my comment from the parallel "Yesterday's News Tomorrow" thread:
Which seemed to be some kind of glitch, but I scrolled down to the comments section where some online readers were taking the H A to task for the quality of their online content. The most interesting comment was from H A Executive Editor Chris Schable ("Tell your" was one of the previous posters in the comments section):
2. Yes, advertisers on the website are paying for traffic, but advertisers in the print edition are as well. Giving the product away for free online makes our print product less valuable.
3. I would love to be able to have comments update immediately, but unfortunately, we have readers that can't control themselves when leaving comments. The amount and level of racism, sexism, vulgarity, baseless accusations, etc., is shocking and we can not trust commentors to follow the guidelines we've put in place.
We update them when we can. Remember, we're putting out what amounts to a small novel every day and approving comments on the website take a backseat to news gathering.
4. Newspapers are not failing due to this policy. In fact, there are more newspaper readers now than any time in history. The problem is, newspapers are giving away content for free online and that is where it is being read. We're the only industry in the world that pays to create a product and them simply gives it away. In some cases, like ours, we were giving away our product for free before it actually arrived to the homes of paying subscribers. That is a recipe for failure.

2. So their advertisers are worthless on line where they get more views than in the print? That doesn't make sense.

3. You can fix that pretty easily. Look no further than here for an example. Do like everyone else on the planet and make people register, that way they can be tracked and banned if needed in the cases of racism etc.

4. This is completely contradictory. If there are more readers, and they are on-line, and they have paying advertisers on-line, they wouldn't be losing money, because they wouldn't be "giving it away for free". Either they are making money on-line, or they aren't.

Like I said before, the whole rest of the news world seems to be able to manage these things together. The rest of the world has embraced the on-line community and put it to work to their advantage. At the end of the day it is completely obvious that the ND doesn't want to allocate the resources to make the web worth while to them. Instead they are trying to do this on the cheap and to force people to pay the 75 cents for the print edition, when they could make the money back through the web, and the reach of the web.

[edgeywood]

Like I said before, the whole rest of the news world seems to be able to manage these things together. The rest of the world has embraced the on-line community and put it to work to their advantage. At the end of the day it is completely obvious that the ND doesn't want to allocate the resources to make the web worth while to them. Instead they are trying to do this on the cheap and to force people to pay the 75 cents for the print edition, when they could make the money back through the web, and the reach of the web.

The "online community" doesn't have the credibility or the resources for the most part to provide a real news service. This board, as well as aggregators such as Google News depends on material from newspapers such as the N-D for content. Web ads are not as lucrative as print ads, so how do you pay for quality reporters, editors, investigative reporting, etc... ?

I was a subscriber to the Chicago Tribune for over 25 years. In the past few years, they've chosen to pursue a more entertainment (read cheaper to produce) oriented approach. There's less hard news, more "lifestyle" type stories. This drove away many loyal newspaper readers, such as myself. That was their solution to declining readership of the print edition.

I've also noticed a decline in the N-D, but in the interest of supporting local news, I choose to subscribe. I really don't care if someone else reads it for free on the web, but I do know that the web advertising business model is probably unsustainable.

[NDReporter]

The "online community" doesn't have the credibility or the resources for the most part to provide a real news service. This board, as well as aggregators such as Google News depends on material from newspapers such as the N-D for content. Web ads are not as lucrative as print ads, so how do you pay for quality reporters, editors, investigative reporting, etc... ?

I was a subscriber to the Chicago Tribune for over 25 years. In the past few years, they've chosen to pursue a more entertainment (read cheaper to produce) oriented approach. There's less hard news, more "lifestyle" type stories. This drove away many loyal newspaper readers, such as myself. That was their solution to declining readership of the print edition.

I've also noticed a decline in the N-D, but in the interest of supporting local news, I choose to subscribe. I really don't care if someone else reads it for free on the web, but I do know that the web advertising business model is probably unsustainable.

Amen, edgeywood. Amen.