Update: Ernie Schreiber, editor of the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, has responded to this post. I encourage you to read his response.
If I were seeking to kill off newspapers (I’m not), I would try to persuade them to charge people to read obituaries online. Apparently that’s the plan of Journalism Online, a profiteer seeking to cash in not only on newspapers’ death wish but on the deaths of their readers.
Journalism Online’s sucker in this fantasy-based paywall experiment is the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era (oh, the irony in that name; I will call it the Old Era for purposes of this blog). People who read more than seven obits a month at the test site, LancasterOnline in Pennsylvania, will be denied access unless they pay $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year.
I won’t explain the plan here; Poynter’s Bill Mitchell and paidContent’s Staci Kramer gave Old Era Editor Ernie Schreiber lots of opportunity to explain his rationale and projections, which are equally ridiculous.
I also won’t explain how shaky the Journalism Online projections are. Mark Potts did an excellent job of that.
And I won’t repeat my general arguments against paywalls, which I have repeated ad nauseum.
What I will explain here is why, in the long and shameful history of newspapers refusing to innovate, this might be the most shortsighted, stupid move yet.
Here are four reasons this move will backfire in a big way:
- The Old Era is double-dipping on death. Families of the deceased already pay for the newspaper to publish the obituaries. You can justify making obits available in the print edition only for people who pay, because the company charges everyone for the print edition. But the Old Era is not throwing a paywall around its whole news site, just the obits. Schreiber blithely explained to Mitchell: “Our premise is that when a family through a funeral home pays for an obit, they’re really paying to alert the community [where] the newspaper circulates. … No part of that fee is associated with a promise to circulate that obit worldwide.” Nice value proposition on the fee for publishing an obit. The Old Era is charging both to publish the obituary and to read it. Good luck making that look like you’re not looking for a way to squeeze a little more money from grieving people.
- People can find the obituaries somewhere else. I just visited the Old Era site and looked online for one obituary, chosen because she had a distinctive name. I easily found another obit for her at another news site. She wasn’t on Legacy.com, but the second person I tried who was listed in the Old Era obits was. Many, if not most, funeral homes publish obits on their web sites. Even more will do so. Or more families and funeral homes will publish their obits at Legacy.com (which may be a whole different kind of obituary problem for news organizations).
- The people who are most interested in obituaries are older people, the most loyal group of newspaper readers. Do you really want to push them to learn how easy it is to find news elsewhere?
- People share their anger. Most of the people who check the obituaries more than seven times a month have strong connections to your community (those are their friends they’re checking up on). These are people who have moved away from the community but still have friends who live there. They may not be worth much to your advertisers. But they mean a lot to their aging friends (who are bound to be loyal readers of the Old Era). What newspaper executives in their right minds think that the trickle of revenue to be had from charging to read obits is worth the local black eye for charging both to publish them and to read them?
Older readers are one of the few assets a newspaper has these days (I can’t remember who I stole this from, but I wasn’t the first to suggest calling the obits the “reader countdown”). A decision to milk your remaining assets this way is tantamount to surrender.
As noted above, Ernie Schreiber, editor of the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, has responded to this post. I encourage you to read his response.
See “The Vanishing Newspaper” and read up on “harvesting.”
Just another example.
The death throes of newspapers have been so easy to predict, it’s really a tragicomedy watching it all play out.
I’ve come to the conclusion that newspaper editors are so clueless about how they’re killing newspapers that they don’t have a clue about their cluelessness. They’re beyond mere denial.
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Isn’t there a focus group they could utilize for ideas like this? (and I use the term “idea” loosely.)
I really think newspaper readers understand the time-tested ways for newspapers to increase revenue — higher subscription fees, advertising rates and the like. But to double-dip on families and friends already in mourning seems abjectly cruel, even mean-spirited. I don’t think that’s a trail legacy media really wants to blaze. It’s certainly no way to build audience.
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There’s really no way to justify this as a long-term strategy for growth. It’s a short-term revenue squeeze that diminishes the influence and relevance of the newspaper.
The only reason anyone pays a newspaper to run an obit is they think it’s the only viable distribution channel. That’s not been true for a while, but the system endures because the older population devoted to obituaries is less likely to flock to online services. But putting up a paywall begs people to search for “good enough” alternatives — and they will find them.
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[…] with a truly obsessive fascination with grazing news about local deaths.He’s joined by Steve Buttry, who writes:If I were seeking to kill off newspapers (I’m not), I would try to persuade them to charge people […]
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It’s beyond head scratching. At most papers you get flak if you raise the price of obits in print, so what’s gonna happen with this? Also as Mark Potts points out the numbers are really, deeply suspect.
So what’s the win here? Prospects for revenue low, potential for backlash high. Seems like a bad strategy to me.
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obituary info is unique, timely and valuable … it seems silly not to leverage it and make money … people won’t pay for steinbrenner’s obit, but they would for his barber’s
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[…] 13, 2010 by Steve Buttry When I posted Newspaper charges for reading obits online: double-dipping on death, I invited Ernie Schreiber, editor of the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, to respond. His […]
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[…] 13, 2010 by Steve Buttry When I posted Newspaper charges for reading obits online: double-dipping on death, I invited Ernie Schreiber, editor of the Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era, to respond. I […]
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Thanks for all the responses. I appreciate the lively discussion. Please also read Ernie Schreiber’s response: http://bit.ly/9Nq9g8 and my response to him: http://bit.ly/cdVPqd
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As if intentionally timed to prove Steve’s point: A Columbus, Ohio, TV station is partnering with ObitOhio.com and funeral homes to offer a new online and on-air obituary listings service.
http://www2.nbc4i.com/news/2010/jul/12/nbc-4-wcmh-tv-announces-partnership-obitohiocom-ar-146323/
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Expect more such efforts. Thanks for the heads-up, Guy.
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[…] 14, 2010 by Steve Buttry Monday night I criticized a Pennsylvania newspaper’s plan to charge loyal online readers to read the obituaries. Today I […]
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[…] grief. That’s what I faulted LancasterOnline for in my Monday post on their plan to charge for reading online obituaries, and at least one commenter on my Wednesday post turned that same issue back on me, suggesting that […]
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[…] Steve Buttry posted his own critique of the plan, centering on the fact that the paper is double-dipping by charging people to both read […]
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[…] Steve Buttry posted his own critique of the plan, centering on the fact that the paper is double-dipping by charging people to both read […]
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[…] new business model for obituaries was my seventh most-popular post of 2010 (and related posts about LancasterOnline’s plan to charge frequent out-of-town obituary readers also drew some attention). I noted that Journal […]
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[…] two years ago, Steve Buttry pointed out the problems and opportunities in the obit business. He was right then, and he’s righter now. But it’s even worse than I knew when I read […]
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[…] I have criticized the Times for its paywall, but again, only in the context of a long history of questioning the newspaper industry’s overall strategy regarding digital revenue. I’ve also criticized paywall moves by Gannett and the Lancaster New Era. […]
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