MARY GLICK | Here are the recommendations of a small group of news executives who met during API's Newsmedia Economic Action Plan Conference (Sept. 13-15) to tackle the issue of content value and what consumers might be willing to pay for.
What are the most important action items for news organizations to take?
• Research
• Product Development
• Test, fail, test again
• Buy/partner technology instead of building it
What new policies, standards, best practices need to be adopted in order to move forward in this area?
• Stop talking and start doing.
• Accept good enough to get started, evaluate and revise and start again.
• Newsrooms become customer-facing.
• Newsrooms become news producers. Approach content as bytes, not whole pieces.
- One model allows viewers X number of stories in a week, and then asks them to pay for print content online; all Web-only content is free. In order to grow traffic for Web-only content, we need to train newsrooms on how to tag content. Tagged adds value and helps to create packages of like content on other platforms. Applying "vivid context" is a value-add and can also lead to more sale of content by offering "you-may-also-like"-type functionality when serving up search results or single stories.
• Newsrooms become part of the social fabric of the community, which requires marketing expertise and participating in social networking sites.
- Another model is the Club model, where groups are created around a topic and discounts, coupons, discussion forums, exclusive events are given to group members. This requires newsrooms to be open to marketing their expertise directly to readers.
What additional research or experimentation still needs to be done?
Markets are needed to test:
• Subscription levels
• X number of free stories per month for print content, Web-only stays free and is ad supported
• Club memberships where data could also be mined for consumer focus groups
• Online applications stores like the iPhone apps store or Android Market, where databases and other Web-only content and services would be accessible only to members
• Hybrid of all the above where current print subscribers always receive the highest level of service
Share out results. We've no idea if people will pay and for what and how much. Need to test different models.
Opportunities
Explore business-to-business content (information that can be charged to a company expense account):
• Organizing, filtering and adding value to data
• Creating an "inside scoop" blog for companies with headquarters in the local area
• A book of lists that have value to businesses
• Provide information services to businesses that want it
• Pay to publish press releases.
Group members: Jeff Ackerman of the Grass Valley Union, Merrill Brown of MMB Media LLC, Nick Cadwallender of The Free Lance-Star, Greg Farmer of The Kansas City Star, Bob Gilbert of Morris Digital Works, David Mele of The Virginian-Pilot, Donna Reed of Media General Inc., Kathy Schwartz of Times-Shamrock Communications.
