My biweekly column in the Lakeville Journal is out today, but you can only read it online if you are a premium subscriber ($28/year). I think the LJ is making a considerable mistake. Paying for smalltown local news online must be a very limited revenue source and is only really relevant to local readers.who are able to buy the print edition if they wish (and most do). Having me and my friends link to the article on Facebook and in this blog drives new readers from across the web to the LJ will produce more hits to share with potential advertisers. You cannot have both.
I wish the Journal well and will continue to write stories, but as long as this policy remains in place I will no longer be linking to my pieces online, nor will I be publishing fair use extracts on my blog or on Facebook. It's just too frustrating to follow a referral into that brick Premium wall.
It's also interesting that for the first they have enabled comments on their website. This is an excellent development but it will be very difficult to get a dialogue going with a paywall and the more limited audience that results.
Posted by: Terry Cowgill | July 16, 2011 at 08:23 AM
I tend to agree Tim. Unless you have a culture in which readers have long been accustomed to paying (e.g. Wall Street Journal) or a stellar brand (NYT), a pay wall is a mixed blessing at best.
The pay wall will provide the company with a new revenue stream but fewer eyes will see the pages, which will inevitably drive ad rates down. Of course, it may be that the LJ was getting so little in web ad revenue that they felt they had little to lose.
Posted by: Terry Cowgill | July 14, 2011 at 01:19 PM