Comments on: Why Warren Buffett is wrong about newspaper paywalls

By: Margo Ann

Margo Ann — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 17:57:16 +0000

The Washington Post has diversified into other businesses. For example, it owns Kaplan Education, one if the for-profit college and university chains. Congress is supposed to be investigating the for-profits, but in the meantime, the companies are targeting veterans and taking advantage of government tutition payments. More of the Post’s revenues came from Kaplan over the past couple of years than from its news operations. This may be a questionable example of the benefits of diversifying, but newspapers are going to have to find revenue if they want to keep going and giving away content will only work for papers that are making money elsewhere.

By: Rich Julius

Rich Julius — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 17:02:23 +0000

Paywalls won’t work for several reasons, as discussed in this article from BloggingWrites.com: http://bloggingwrites.com/paywalls-the-wrong-solution-for-news-370/. Basically, consumers have never really supported the news industry; advertisers did. What news publishers need to do is go back and find out what advertisers are spending their money on. Online ad budgets from both large and small businesses are increasing! So news agencies can’t just say that their banner ads are paying nothing: they have to move to the advertising products and services that today’s businesses need.

By: Shoe Thrower

Shoe Thrower — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 15:19:32 +0000

“a paywall is almost inevitably going to appeal to only a small subset of readers.”

And? A restaurant’s charging for food probably doesn’t appeal to customers either. It’s not supposed to appeal to them – it’s supposed to keep the newspaper around.

Buffett is exactly right about this. Although it’s interesting to see that the “1) give our product away; 2) ???; 3) PROFIT!” business model somehow survived past 2001.

By: JP

JP — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:15:22 +0000

The ULTIMATE problem with newspapers today is that there is NO NEWS IN THEM! They just rehash what television, social and other electronic media have already covered. They made a fatal classic Business 101 mistake years back: they cost cut themselves into the corner they are now in. The broke the number one rule of marketing : DO NOT DILUTE THE BRAND… EVER!
When the Internet started to be serious competition, instead of beefing up their reporting staffs and products with better and unique offerings, they went the other way, they cut, cut, cut and as they did so they lost more and more readers as they raced to the bottom in a downward spiral. And now they are flip-flopping around in desperation trying to salvage what they can.

My answer: now that Steve Jobs, who had a horrible hatred of newspapers almost equal to his hatred of fans, is gone: cut a deal with Apple, someway, somehow, because it is the future… today!

By: Susan Kolbe

Susan Kolbe — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 12:22:17 +0000

The Privacy Policy and use of “Personally Identifiable Information” are part of the digital value exchange, free or not.

By: Samuel Lavoie

Samuel Lavoie — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 04:35:16 +0000

Great way to put it, it goes nicely with the last paragraph [quote]In many ways, newspapers and other media platforms were the original social networks[/quote]
and when you think about them this way, there is much more way to monetize relationship.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:16:54 +0000

BTW… nice paywall you got here at GigaOm. Kinda brilliant, actually. You bring people in with free content and then get them to pay for “premium” content? Hmmm… sounds like the New York Times to me. What does the premium content say? “We’re just joking about ‘paywalls are bad’! Only a fool wouldn’t have one. Now aren’t you glad you know?”

By: Stephen

Stephen — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 23:10:30 +0000

Let’s see what the director of mobile at the WaPo says about paywalls for their iPad…“The Post’s flagship iPad app remains free while we continue to make enhancements to the product,” Jacobs said. “When we begin to charge, we want to make sure we are launching with a compelling, value-add experience.”

Hmmmm… “remains free”….”when we begin to charge”…Looks like you’re about to suffer some serious betrayal at the hands of your favorite newspaper, at least on the iPad front. Because the WaPo wants to make money, I think we can expect to see it go the way of NYT, LAT, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun, Minneapolis, Omaha, San Fran, Boston, Providence, Cincinatti, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Phoenix…all paywalled (or soon to be)

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:48:45 +0000

The Washington Post’s slogan is “If you don’t get it, you don’t get it,” which is pretty absurd. Do they really think people believe that?

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 20:17:13 +0000

Thanks, Anthony — and thanks for the link as well.