Media Matters

Ever since newspapers started creating their own websites the question has been raised — how much of our content should we give away free there?
More recently it’s been ‘Should we put content on the website before it’s out on paper’?
There’s no simple answer for every paper to either or both. Each title must find its own strategy based on the habits of its readership.
That said, the basic idea that your own website will cannibalise readers of the print edition has been pretty well dismissed by the City University research. In fact further research showed websites actually encourage sampling of the print paid-for.
So is it worth putting all your content up on the Web? Roy Greenslade recently quoted a view heretical to the idea that you should give it all away in order to gain higher readership, a Web presence and a new revenue stream to ultimately replace that from your print product.
The number of readers who use both products varies (no surprise there — those with younger audiences will be higher, those with less digitally-comfortable readerships will be less). So surely finding out what your readers might do is worth researching before giving away your content online for pennies when you’re still earning pounds from it in print.
All that said, my gut says that people’s lifestyles and communication preferences will play a large part in determining their media channel of choice and how much they’ll use print and Web. And that the amount of overlap is marginal.
Most of all, though, we have to do better to monetize all readers’ interactions of our paper brands, whatever channel they’re using, as several papers have been doing by agreeing deals with US ad agencies to sell ads into their websites for the “Web tourists” reading UK titles online. Frankly, that was a no-brainer as soon as we saw what a high percentage of readers online for some titles were outside the UK. Why it took them so long I don’t know.
Ultimately all titles will end up with pretty much all of their content free online, except for those like the FT and Economist who can offer exclusive, premium content, which they’ll make sure you pay for.
So, as I said, there’s no one answer.