Arkansas Blog

One more nail in THEIR coffin . . .

Well, I wasn't reading their stale, day old news for free anyway, but 6 dollars a month for out of date content sure does sound enticing. Why that's only 20 cents a day! Not bad for digital toilet paper.

The online was no charge for print subscribers. Is that changed?

They don't even have the guts to let readers post visible comments. I cancelled them a year ago and remain glad. News stories in which only D-G sources are quoted is another good reason why.

Just means I won't be able to send links to the few interesting articles reprinted. I still get the print version though to be honest I only read it online. Half the days, I grab the paper and throw it inside the house before leaving for work. The other half I step over it and let my better half throw it inside.

If not for the email update in the morning with links and following links from tweets, I would never read the Dem-Gaz. I persist subscribing I think out of fear that John Brummet will come after me for getting my news from the evil internet rather real ink and paper.

"Walter Hussman, publisher of the Democrat-Gazette and president of WEHCO Media, said last week . . . that print advertising remains, by far, the dominant source of revenue supporting the company's news-gathering efforts."

That may come as a surprise to some, but not to me. It's why I'll expect a printed AD-G to be at my doorstep every morning for the rest of my life. Viva the AD-G!

Here ya go. Do the clicky

It's a gamble and unless the other NWA paper takes their content offline the ADG will lose. Even if the other paper starts charging their cost is $48/year vs $72 for the ADG.

I like the news, I don't like the paper. I don't like "digital versions" of the paper. I like headlines and a few lines of the article to let me know if it's something I should read.

With current policies durango, you will out live the paper. Too bad they did not learn to profit from an online presence.

The rapidly growing NWA area will be lost to them. Washington and Benton Counties have as many people as Pulaski and after next year's census it will likely be significantly more population as census is now designing ways to more accurately count Springdale's exploding Marshallese residents and Hispanic residents.

It is a perfect time for AT to capitalize on the NWA market as the ADG will lose more of its influence and online distribution. Perhaps a classified or realty section for NWA.

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The NYT is deciding whether they will go to a fee for the internet version of their paper. Decision will be made in Aug. I'm sure they consider Hussman's opinion.

It's interesting that the NYT would be considering going back to a pay-for-content model. They tried that a few years ago and retreated.

Walter's just tired of Max linking to his NWA edition all the time.

Yeah, the noive of those guys not wanting to let every Tom, Dick and Harry link their news-gathered property all over the internets for free. That ain't American.

Hussman is probably right in one respect: Printed newspapers will be around forever. Just like vinyl records. You can still buy vinyl records at places like Amazon, including new releases. Nobody buys 'em, but they're still available.

The revenue model of the future for daily newspapers is micropayments and on-line advertising. Unfortunately for Arkansas, we're 49th in broadband access, so it will be a difficult transition - especially for the Dem-Gaz, which has never been a big advocate of broadband advancement here.

Due to their technological backwardness, the best days of the Dem-Gaz are behind them. They will continue to downsize their staff, print fewer pages, reduce their delivery area, watch their subscriptions decline and lock into a downward spiral. They failed to use their influence to advocate for a modern telecom infrastructure here that could have given them a viable transition path. It's a sad situation for an otherwise good newspaper.

eLwood, again, let's listen to Prince Walter:

"The fact of the matter is the vast majority of people who read our newspapers online are people who are already subscribers to the newspapers."

He described me there, and I suspect you, too. Combine that with the fact that "by far" Hussman's revenue comes from print advertising and ya gotta wonder what he has to lose by discontinuing his "free" NWA online editions? Assuming that The Moron News is his chief competition up there and assuming that it's as poor a paper as you and others have stated, it just figures that the AD-G will continue to do well in the hills. I've long agreed with Hussman that it's foolish for one to give away his product. Can't believe it's taken him this long to finally pull the plug.

Arkansas Blogger, don't be too quick to forecast Hussman and the AD-G's death "due to their technological backwardness." As even Hugh Patterson might concede, were he still around, Ole Walter ain't nearly as goofy and naïve as he may look. He's treading water, even swimming slightly toward shore while others continue to drown.

durango, in 10 years there is going to be simply media. It could be a combo of phone and what we now call the internet. Little of it will be print. Yes, people are going to video stores and renting movies on dvd. Before that they rented them on VHS. DVD is digital. We no longer visit the video stores. We download what we wish to watch and before that I go online and read a couple of newspapers, plus scan over a few blogs.

What "Sir Walter" is doing is presiding over a rapidly declining kingdom.

Horses, buggies, wagons were the main stay of American transportation for two centuries.
Ocean travel was the mainstay of foreign travel for several centuries now they're reduced to
weekends on 'Cruise boats" and most of us see horses in parades or rodeos. But for over two hundred years horses and/or mules and tack were commonplace in American lives. It took about 20 years for the new transportation to effect a sea-change while buggy whip makers became mechanics.

Craigs List dominates classified ads more and more each day. I know several people in their 40s who will someday be our age and they NEVER buy a newspaper and never read a newspaper adv.
They have smart phones, blackberries, and other devices.

They are the future. Advertising will become more and more 'market driven' and hence targeted ads. If you think Dept of Homeland Security is pervasive look at what info mining is producing.
Newspapers can never do that. There can never be an edition for durango. Not so with digital-based media. Already when I log onto websites there are ads popping up telling me what others in Springdale, AR have bought from so and so. The god damned server/webmaster could be in India.

We rack up our Walmart ticket with a debit card. They know our buying preferences and they are now developing plans to tell customers who buy organic soy milk, dark chocolate and fragrance free soaps when there is a special on it and when new, related products are on their shelves. Who gets there first should be where you invest your money.

Seal up a few copies of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette for your grand kids. Interesting relics they will be.
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And they're getting VERY picky with their online access for subscribers. A friend lets me "borrow" his account to read the paper occasionally. He can access it just fine, but I no longer can, using the same login information. So they're checking (one would think) the number of IP addresses that the account info is coming from. I used to work with him, so I'm sure our external IPs looked the same. Now that I'm somewhere else, they don't. Crafty.

I have the last copy of the Arkansas Gazette, the first edition of the combined Dem/Gaz....along with some other relics....such as Jessica Hahn's account ala Rev. Bakker (Nov. '87), Dorothy Stratton's Playboy (1980), Paula Jone's Penthouse (1997), Vanessa Williams Penthouse(1984), Woodward/Bernstien Playboy (1974) and a slew of Sport's Illustrated (some of us remember "Hurrying Harry" Jones)......

Cato, the only ADG front page I saved was the one with TWO-INCH headlines

CLINTON ACQUITTED.

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Actually lots of smart people have no idea what's next.
To say that micro-payments are the answer or anything else is both foolish and wrong.
You can't even say that the Internet will be around in 10 years. In Chris Anderson's book Free, he takes a swing and says that content providers just have to get to use to the idea that people will no longer pay for what they produce and they have to figure out outher revenue sources.
For Anderson it is racking up huge speaking fees. For Jeff Jarvis, it is being paid to be a consultant to say that print is dead.
I digress, Malcom Gladwell rightly destroyed Anderson's arguments in a New Yorker article and Anderson had to back down some when it was realized he had copied and pasted whole chunks of wikipedia for "his" book.
Back to the Internet, I don't think it will be around. In terms of infrastructure. America has already wired itself for cable, and cable providers got a cut of money. Why would anyone rewire America for free and not expect anything back in return?
People love teh youtubes, but why not have that as on demand feature from Comcast, that you pay for? Right now teh youtubes suck half a billion dollars a year from teh googles to maintain.
Craigs List has classified ads, you can also buy hookers and maybe end up dead as well.
Part of free is that you can't guarantee the quality.
I figure that with the on the horizon changes in the copyright law, and other, as of yet unseen, changes, and the golden age of free media Americans are enjoying will soon be a thing of the past.
In reality, it all comes down to a question of fairness in what Jarvis calls the "link economy."
No media outlet in the state has as many news gathering employees as the D*G. Pre layoffs, it was pushing 300, now I think it is around 250.
In terms of the news, the D*G drives it. A daily tipsheet to the tv stations, radio stations, websites and weekly newspapers.
Right now, Max and a very small handful of bloggers are making money off the D*G's efforts, and that will go away when the free backdoor closes. And why shouldn't it?
Page views and clicks are just the vanity circulation in the Internet age. If I'm an advertiser in Springdale who has no outlet in central Arkansas, why should I care that a grumpy, middle-agged man in Little Rock can't post a link to a northwest Arkanasas newspaper article?
Chances are, it means little or nothing to the bottom line of that business and it means little to nothing for the bottom line of that media outlet.
While the liberal "thinkers" here choose to mock Boo, he's had it right from the beginning and you can bet your ass, big media companies are watching.

Okay, I've rambled enough, the dog is whining, so away from the computer for me.

ARK. BLOG: Lots wrong here. 1) Out of the 75 to 100 posts a week I do on the blog, I don't think I link to the D-G more than 2 or 3 times a week. Its disappearance as a free link will be mostly a non-event for me. We've built substantial readership here through our own efforts, not those of the D-G. 2) Though there's no doubt it's the major news reporting engine in Arkansas, the D-G is by no means alone. The LR and NWA TV stations break a ton of news. I link to them far more often, because it's readily available and timely. The Morning News was just judged the best (large) daily newspaper in Arkansas. We have a partnership with that media company as well as with Fox 16. 3) If you haven't noticed, we cover a lot of news on our own. Sometimes, the D-G benefits for free from our effort. See their catchups last week on the War Memorial compromise and LR school supt. troubles, both reported here fully long before they appeared in the D-G. Their new web editor is now pushing breaking news online, sometimes nothing more than rewrites of news reported elsewhere, that old "freee backdoor" you talk about. See their breaking news alerts on the Hot Springs fugitive shooting last week, all based on radio and TV eyewitness accounts. (4) Part of the value of niche Internet publications is editing and point of view. You can develop a readership that either a) shares that idiosyncratic point of view or b) dislikes it enough to check occasionally to bitch. Either way, it builds a readership for which advertising can be sold. 5) I'm the last person to underestimate Hussman and my record has been clear on that for years. He's making another heady gamble. He may land a big jackpot again.

But I still think -- and this is a universal thought, not one directed locally -- that print will be a niche relic in the not too distant future. It won't disappear, most likely not in my lifetime. But it is never coming back to the position it once held.

Crash Davis - Micropayments are neither wrong nor foolish. You probably haven't been in the industry long enough to know that the concept of micropayments has been around for decades, but they haven't succeeded because no one has done a proper implementation of them. The infrastructure that will be required is enormous, and must be operated by a respected, well-established financial firm. But when that infrastructure exists, micropayments will be the pay-as-you-go method that consumers will use to purchase all sorts of products and services, including news content.

Your comments remind me of those from the execs at a major local data processing firm many years ago, to wit: "We think the Internet is just a fad on the college campuses. It will never amount to anything. Instead, we think the future is interactive television." They've never fully recovered from that mistake.

eLwood, your points about the future of newspapers are thoughtful and sobering. And who am I to say you're wrong? If your predictions come true and I'm alive to see 'em, I'll be among the first to embrace the changes. But as long as there's a printed newspaper anywhere in the world that's translated to English, I'll subscribe to it, too. And I'd add this more local note: If ever the day comes when the last newspaper is printed in Arkansas, it'll be ole Walter's paper. He's a shrewd survivalist if ever there was one, and has proved it.

"The Morning News was just judged the best daily newspaper in Arkansas." -- ARK. BLOG

Hold on, boss. There was no "best daily newspaper in Arkansas" award presented during the APA meeting. The Morning News, the Batesville Daily Guard and the Daily Citizen in Searcy each won the general excellence prize among daily newspapers their size.

The AD-G had 10 first-place awards in the journalism contest. Debra Hale-Shelton won first place in the investigative reporting category with her coverage of financial matters involving former University of Central Arkansas president Lu Hardin. Cathy Frye and John Krupa won in the feature story category with their coverage of the aftermath of the Feb. 5 tornados that struck Atkins, killing four people. Seth Blomeley and Michael R. Wickline also took first place for their political coverage.

Other AD-G first-place winners were Kane Webb, sports feature; Jay Grelen, general interest column; Sandra Tyler, headline writing; Stephen B. Thornton, single sports action photograph; Terry Austin, best front page; Roger Harvell, editorial cartoonist portfolio; and Mike Smith, best sports page.

ARK. BLOG: The point, of course, was that there is more than one newspaper in this state and they do excellent work. I'm confident, however, that in a straightup contest the Morning News would best the Batesville and Searcy papers. I should add that contests don't mean much. The Arkansas Gazette won the APA sweepstakes award for the best large daily newspaper in Arkansas the last five years of its existence. We know how that turned out.

I might have pushed a button or two. The point remains, some blogs, this one, are making money off of other outlets' efforts. In turn, the idea is that the links provided here, drive readers to the other outlets' sites and everybody wins.
I'd argue though that the back and forth of links means little in terms of real money. Media outlets make money because they tell advertisers they are the best way to let the consumer know what it is going on at the business. While lots of clicks add up, they mean little if those people aren't local or have the firefox plugin that blocks ads or one of the any other dozen ways a person can avoid online advertising.
I've never quite understand where the whole notion of the internet must be free came from. Why?
If I produce unique content and assume that it has value. And a media company agrees and pays me for it. Why should then they say, here come get this for free on the internet or you can buy the edtorial product at your local news stand.
Day in and day out, and expand lots of effort and resources to make the free online product more appealing.
How does that make any sense?
To me, it doesn't. But it sure gets lots of bloggers and interweb activists very fired up because why wouldn't someone like Max want to augment his single digit staff with hundreds of professional reporters, editors and producers from around Arkansas. By doing so, he creates a portal site, that means people look here for everything Arkansas and he mostly provides it.

As for the other geniuses.
From Clay Shirky, an NYU professor and professor, who is widely regarded as something of an expert on the interwebs.

Why Micropayment Systems Don't Work

The people pushing micropayments believe that the dollar cost of goods is the thing most responsible for deflecting readers from buying content, and that a reduction in price to micropayment levels will allow creators to begin charging for their work without deflecting readers.

This strategy doesn't work, because the act of buying anything, even if the price is very small, creates what Nick Szabo calls mental transaction costs, the energy required to decide whether something is worth buying or not, regardless of price. The only business model that delivers money from sender to receiver with no mental transaction costs is theft, and in many ways, theft is the unspoken inspiration for micropayment systems.

Very much a fascinating read...
http://shirky.com/writings/fame_vs_fortune.html

This is arguably Shirky's most famous piece
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/
Here's a portion
Print media does much of society's heavy journalistic lifting, from flooding the zone - covering every angle of a huge story - to the daily grind of attending the City Council meeting, just in case. This coverage creates benefits even for people who aren't newspaper readers, because the work of print journalists is used by everyone from politicians to district attorneys to talk radio hosts to bloggers. The newspaper people often note that newspapers benefit society as a whole. This is true, but irrelevant to the problem at hand; "You're gonna miss us when we're gone!" has never been much of a business model. So who covers all that news if some significant fraction of the currently employed newspaper people lose their jobs?

I don't know. Nobody knows. We're collectively living through 1500, when it's easier to see what's broken than what will replace it. The internet turns 40 this fall. Access by the general public is less than half that age. Web use, as a normal part of life for a majority of the developed world, is less than half that age. We just got here. Even the revolutionaries can't predict what will happen.

ARK. BLOG: The point you miss is that unique content is not always news reporting. It is also analysis. It is also some added reporting to reporting of others. See radio for the first version of the Internet. Whoever got idea it should be free? Or TV?

Crash Davis - Clay Shirky is not universally regarded as an "expert". He cites the failure of some past attempts at micropayment systems and claims that there was nothing wrong with their implementations. He's wrong. Consumers don't trust those unproven companies he cited to handle their money. DigiCoin? Never heard of 'em, so why should I trust them with my credit card number? Microsystems will succeed only when they are implemented properly by the trusted, adequately capitalized companies, and that is likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

The real expert is Ted Nelson, who is credited with first proposing the concept of micropayments in the 1960s. He also invented hypertext, commonly seen today as "http". His track record on these matters is far better than Clay Shirky's.