Why it doesn’t matter if InDenver Times succeeds or not.
Intro: I’m Jessica and I spend a lot of time thinking about journalism, both its past and its future. Donica invited me a few weeks ago to crossblog between Fix Journalism and my personal blog, and I’ve finally gotten around to doing it.
Newspapers were my first journalism love, so I’m particularly fascinated with what forms they are starting to take. How far will we have come when the words “online newspaper” become archaic and sound as funny as “radio with pictures,” as the television was once described?
Which brings me to the real content my first post…
I don’t care who you are. Whether you’re an experienced journalist, a cynical editor, a skeptical student, a hopeful professor…you stopped to think about what the death of the Rocky Mountain News meant when they announced that their last issue would publish on Feb. 27.
You probably watched their Vimeo (my heart broke a little when I saw the journalist buy a lottery ticket and vow that he would buy the paper if he won) and downloaded the PDF copy of their front cover.
The day came and it ended. Newspapers closing isn’t a new story in America (see a full list of defunct newspapers here). It was time to move on and predict who was the next to go. The San Francisco Chronicle? The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (which has since stopped printing and is now online only)?
But part of the Rocky’s staff had a different idea.
They banded together, they found a few business executives who believed in their mission, they put together a makeshift Web site, they held a press conference and voila – InDenver Times was born.
Their plan is simple, if not easy to achieve: get 50,000 subscribers to agree to pay $4.99 a month to receive full access to their Web site. If they get these subscribers, the site launches in May.
Ludicrous, right? I’ve already heard the argument that no one, especially 50,000 no ones, will pay for news when they can get it for free online.
But according to InDenver, they’re not asking people to pay for news. They’re asking them to pay for the “little bit more” that journalists supposedly provide:
What will be free?
The news is free. For example: The story about who the Denver Broncos select in the first round of the NFL Draft will be available to all readers.What do I have to pay for?
Insight, perspective, live blogging, live chatting, commenting, interactivity with writers and other readers. For example: What our Broncos writers think about the Broncos’ first-round pick and who they think the Broncos will pick in the second round, will be found in analysis and live chatting that are part of a subscription.
Even then, the question still remains – is it worth it? Or rather, will the people of the Denver metropolitan area think it’s worth it?
I don’t know. It’s a hard call. About 2.5 million people live in the area, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (not including the Boulder and Greeley populations). InDenver is asking for 50,000 subscribers, a mere 2 percent of that population.
The Rocky boasted a 255,427 daily circulation and a 704,806 Sunday circulation in 2006, according to the Burrelles Luce list of the Top 100 newspapers according to circulation.
And the $4.99 they’re asking for will total $3 million if they get the number of subscribers they want, which seems like a lot at first glance. At the press conference, InDenver investor Brad Gray said 70 percent of the costs should go back to the journalists, which would total about $2.1 million in what I assume would be wages and benefits. Not a bad deal for the 30-person staff, who will be living off their severance pay from the Rocky until late April (a Denver blog noted, “In a sense, the company [E.W. Scripps] that shut down the paper is financing their new venture.”).
Looking at the numbers, I think it’s plausible. If they succeed, InDenver would be a news outlet in a major city that was completely backed by its readers/subscribers, not advertising.
And that right there is why the naysayers who think that people don’t and won’t pay for news need to stop and listen.
The InDenver staff’s spirit is what matters in this endeavor. These journalists want to prove that the community they have served for 150 years cares enough to pay for their services.
Maybe it’s a business model that won’t work for any other media outlet. Maybe it’s a model that won’t even work for this media outlet.
But even if they fail, they will have demonstrated the kind of entrepreunurial spirit that is needed right now in journalism. We need the InDenver Times to take risks like this. Even if they fail, they will have tried, and that’s what matters the most.
We can’t find business models by saying micropayments don’t work, by giving flack to Newsday for starting to charge for content and by thinking the InDenver Times is nice, but will ultimately fail. We can only find them by trying, doing, failing and trying again.
Journalism needs risktakers to survive.
To paraphrase InDenver’s slogan, I’m in. Are you?
“InDenver is asking for 50,000 subscribers, a mere 2 percent of that population.”
I estimated that the design-based approach lured 0.1 percent of potential readers. Yet newspapers jumped onto that bandwagon and changed their priorities, to their detriment.
So I don’t think trying to attract 2 percent of the readership is necessarily crazy. Of course, if this bunch relies on the same gimmicks that newspapers do, then life could be rough.
If they’re for subscribers for a dead tree edition, (something which you have to find, buy, read and haul to the trash and feel guilty about the damage to the environment as well as the smudges and the sheer physical presence of,) they might as well give up.
Electrons on a display are a whole lot easier to deal with.