The House of Blue

Times are changing in the world. Businesses are in business to make money. Just the way things are these days, for better or worse.

In fairness to newspapers everywhere they aren't making money from the physical paper itself anymore as people just get their news online for free. Which means advertisers are disappearing or paying less and the revenue is not there so they have to find it somewhere.

Yup it's interesting that people didn't mind paying at minimum a dollar a day for the print product but they balk at $10 a month for the online one. I think people have gotten used to having free online news at their fingertips and now a lot of sites are going to the pay model, will be interesting to see how it evolves going forward.

Yes but you're thinking that all you want to read in the paper is the sports news, of course in that instance you won't use them as your primary reference. Coach Cal isn't covering politics and Cats Pause is reporting crimes and the rest of the news.

They did of course set the precedent you mention and that's why I said it would be interesting going forward above but what it boils down to is whether or not people start to pony up the cash or not, if they don't news as we know/knew it will die. I think utlimately with the removal of the costs of physically printing the paper and being able to offer more product online in the form of videos, podcats, interactive things that enough people will pay up for them to survive in some shape or form.

Some local papers are dieing and will die going forward, it'll definitely be interesting to see what happens with it all! Regardless it's got to be better for the planet without all those trees getting chopped down....

The days for all new print in paper form are numbered. Just the way this tech mad world moves now.

It's probably not the best business decision. A lot of these newspapers have sizable physical assets and a large staff. I suspect that not many are going to pay for articles from a local news outlet when you've got CNN or Fox News or what have you for free. What the Herald Leader should have done is resized their staff, refocused their mission towards internet business, and figured out a way to make it work with advertising alone. Too many people dislike the Herald Leader as it is. As a news source it's largely irrelevant. In the end they're going to see the same result- massive cuts to their labor force and downgrade of their physical facilities. It will just be more painful this way.

It won't work though. The perception, rightly or wrongly, is that all news is available for free online somewhere so why pay for it? People just aren't willing to pay for high quality, well written news coverage anymore. Add in the fact the LHL has a terrible reputation with UK fans & you've got a failed experiment on the horizon.