Gannett stepped into the world of paid content today with what it termed “a small-scale test” at the Tallahassee Democrat, The Greenville (S.C.) News and The (St. George, Utah) Spectrum.
The fee for online-only is $9.95 a month; Web access bundled with a print subscription varies by market. In Tallahassee, seven-day home delivery (with Web access) costs $20. An online day pass costs $2.
Kate Marymont, vice president of news for Gannett’s Community Publishing Division, told me in a brief phone chat that “we know this is not the model, this is a small-scale test.”
Marymont acknowledged that others in the company have been more directly involved in the details of the pay wall initiative than she has been, but said “we weighed a lot of factors” in selecting the three sites from the division’s 81 papers, including “what’s at risk.” She added: “We didn’t want to start at our very largest properties.”
She also said the company wants to test the power of niche content to support online fees (think Clemson football coverage in Greenville; Florida State in Tallahassee) as well as the consequence of a pay wall in a smaller market like St. George (19,919 daily; 23,413 Sunday).
More broadly, she added, “We want to test the idea that our journalism is more of a service than a product, and that we should give readers a selection of delivery methods.”
At Marymont’s suggestion, I followed up with Gannett’s vice president of corporate communications, Robin Pence, in pursuit of a more specific sense of how the three sites were selected. Pence said she was unable to address the question herself, and that the key people involved in the project were unavailable.
Pence said Gannett has not yet decided on the approach for its other markets, but that the company will use what it learns from the test sites “to help us develop our long-term strategy for paid content.”
The idea of addressing a range of consumer needs with multiple products — across various platforms for a single, all-inclusive price — may be gaining traction in the industry, as John Murray of the Newspaper Association of American told me earlier this week in a discussion of reader loyalty programs.
Reconciling the bundled approach with niche services could be a challenge, though.
Marymont said the Democrat has “beefed up” its FSU coverage, for example, but it’s not immediately clear from the site what’s been added — or how a subscriber willing to pay for enhanced Seminole coverage can do so without paying for everything else on the site at the same time.
The Democrat will be able to see how many of its paying customers are accessing football coverage online, of course, but the current set-up does not enable discrete online purchasing decisions based on the FSU niche.
Bob Gabordi, executive editor of the Democrat, has been getting an earful from readers about the pay wall on his blog, including some support. He appeared to be doing his best to be helpful with launch day tech glitches, and he obviously has his sleeves rolled up as he helps guide Gannett into the uncertain laboratory of paid content.
At first glance from afar, the three pay walls in question appear more like blunt instruments than nuanced lab experiments.
Gabordi told readers this week that the site generated 14 million page views in June, a number certain to drop as a result of the all-or-nothing pay wall.
Since online access is provided at no extra charge to home delivery customers — the people regarded as most attractive to local advertisers — the loss of lots of free readers online may be offset by the arrival of relatively few paying ones.
If so, it may turn out that blunt will be good enough — and perhaps less of an experiment than a line in the sand.
