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The Boston Globe is taking a bold step by creating a paid website to go along with the current free site.
From Boston.com
The Boston Globe next year will split its digital news brands into two distinct websites, keeping Boston.com free while establishing a subscription-only pay site, BostonGlobe.com, which will feature all the content produced by the newspaper’s journalists, publisher Christopher M. Mayer said yesterday.
The change, scheduled for the second half of 2011, is aimed at building an audience of paid subscribers online, a strategy that newspapers across the country increasingly are moving toward. With this approach, the company aims to maintain high traffic to Boston.com, one of the nation’s largest regional news sites and a site that generates revenue from advertising.
Boston.com will continue its focus on being a “one-stop source for all things Boston’’ that offers breaking news, sports, and weather from a variety of sources, as well as classified ads, social networking, and information about travel, restaurants, and entertainment, Globe officials said.
Boston.com’s audience will have limited access to journalism that appears in the newspaper, but will have wide-ranging access to content the Globe’s newsroom produces throughout the day for the website.
BostonGlobe.com will contain all the stories and other content from the day’s paper as well as exclusive reports, in-depth news, analysis, commentary, photos and graphics, plus video and interactive features.
“Our research shows that Boston.com currently attracts several different types of users,’’ Mayer said. “Some are readers whose main interest is breaking news and things to do, while others want access to the entirety of The Boston Globe.
“These two distinct sites will allow us to serve both types of readers with maximum effectiveness, while continuing to provide advertisers the large engaged audience they have come to expect from Boston.com.’’
Subscribers to the Globe newspaper will have access to BostonGlobe.com as part of their subscription at no additional charge. The cost of a digital-only subscription has yet to be determined.
The paper is also developing a range of Globe-branded digital products for smartphones, tablets, and other devices.
“We want to deliver our content when people want it, where people want it, and how people want it,’’ Mayer said. “Two brands create exciting opportunities for us.’’
Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst at Outsell Inc., a California market research firm, said the Globe is pursuing a distinct pay model that could allow it to “maintain very large audiences and continue to grow advertising online, and, at the same time, develop a reader revenue stream.’’
Doctor estimated that about 10 percent of Boston.com users might be willing to pay for Globe content online. Boston.com attracts an average of 5 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen NetRatings.
“They’re essentially trying to establish the two-legged business model they had in the print world — advertising and reader money,’’ Doctor said
This is likely to be a tough sell in my opinion as the Globe will have to convince readers that they have something unique and valuable enough to pay for.
There is plenty of news content available on the internet for free and the only truly successful model in the U.S. for paid content is the Wall Street Journal.
Next year the New York Times which also owns the Globe will be creating a paywall for certain content but not a separate website as its sister publication is doing.
This also raises the question of whether or not the Globe can maintain its identity with two websites as readers will have to remember which site offers which services.
If the Globe can pull it off then they may well set the tone for the rest of the newspaper industry which has been struggling with subscriber attrition and disappearing ad dollars and is in desperate need of a new revenue source.
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
2 Comments for The Boston Globe’s Split Web Personalities
Like the rest of the main-stream news media the BOSTON GLOB is losing readers at a high rate becuase their parrots no longer want the paper in their cages anymore
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