(H/T – Patrick McIlheran via Dad29)
Jeff Jarvis ran with a “throwaway” line from Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton stating that the LAT web revenue now exceeds its editorial payroll costs, and speculates that the LAT could switch to a web-only model. There’s a few problems with that:
– The editorial staff is a small part of the newsroom, even the local-only newsroom.
– The web server and technical support for a high-traffic website is not cheap.
– A major metropolitan daily cannot, despite claims to the contrary, focus solely on local and get away with it. Does anybody believe depending on, say, the Washington Post for DC news or the Sacramento Bee for Californai statehouse news is going to be cheaper than relying on The News Organization That Cannot Be Quoted™ (that would be AP), or Reuters?
– Fee-based content, as a rule, does not draw enough to cover the costs.
Maybe if they got rid of the editorial staff, which is the largest bit of aggravation, they could be profitable. I still doubt it, though.
The point is that no one has TRIED fee-based except the WSJ. I don’t know if they have run a story about the results.
And there may be a better “DC coverage” idea than relying on AP/Reuters; one could, for example, see JS teaming with other WI papers (and electronic media players) to hire a shared reporter out there for WI issues.
Nobody’s tried…
Actually, the New York Times tried it, and it flopped. The Journal never expanded it beyond the expanded Packer coverage. While most papers charge for archives retrieved through their own search system, most of those don’t pull the free archives available through a Google/Yahoo search (or a blog link). Even the WSJ scaled back what is behind the fee wall and made the entirety of the editorial page free (with the exception of the email-only Political Diary).
Maybe the Journal could get away with no DC bureau, but they are, as best as I can tell, the only Wisconsin news organization with a DC presence. In fact, outside of the Madison market, the only entities that have a Madison bureau, at least as far as I can determine, are the Journal and the Green Bay Press-Gazette.