Singleton Steps Down as MediaNews Group, Talks Internet Tubes

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by: Colorado Pols

Dean Singleton is stepping down as CEO of MediaNews Group (which owns that big Denver newspaper, among others), though he’ll remain as Chairman as well as publisher of the Denver paper. In a Westword interview, he discussed the move along with online media:

“We’re experimenting with pay walls, but there’s no certainty pay walls are going to work,” he concedes. “The best reason to have a pay wall is that it sends a message to consumers that all information is not free. And I think having sent the message for fifteen years that it is, we need to send a different message — that all information isn’t free. [Pols emphasis] Although you can’t have a total pay wall, because we’re generating a lot of traffic, and a lot of revenue, for the content we have.

We discussed this issue last summer after we received a “cease and desist” letter from the friendly folks at MediaNews Group and others. It’s incredible to see Singleton make this statement because it’s so…so…illogical.

Newspapers and other traditional media outlets have been “giving away” their content for free for decades, and now they want to try to re-train their audience to pay for it? Singleton says “there’s no certainty pay walls are going to work.” We’ll go a step further — there’s no way that pay walls are going to work for exactly the reason Singleton says above. The only possible way that this could work, as we’ve said before, was if every single news outlet in the country decided to go behind a pay wall; it can’t work otherwise, because there’s so many different places for people to go for their news that they don’t need to pay for it.

Singleton seems (sort-of) to understand that a pay-wall idea is futile, even as he talks about trying to push it through:

“The opportunity in new media is not really different than print was for the last hundred years. [Pols emphasis] We talk about selling newspapers, but we never really got paid for content. We got paid for the paper and ink it was printed on, but we built large audiences and got paid by the advertisers who wanted to reach that audience. I don’t think new media is going to be that much different, and I don’t think we’ll get a lot of money for that content. We never have and we probably never will. But the audience we’re building will generate a lot of revenue, and the more focused and fine-tuned that audience is, the higher rate you can get for that audience. And we’re learning to do that.”

If you go behind a pay wall, you will dramatically reduce your online traffic, and thus your value to advertisers. You can’t make significant money from content and significant money from advertisers at the same time, and that’s not something that is unique to the Internet age. Twenty years ago, you couldn’t sell a daily newspaper for $10 and also expect a huge audience that would be attractive for advertisers — there’s a reason that the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News were practically free in the early 1990s. So why would online news be any different? Singleton essentially discusses this above, yet is insistent on “trying” to do a pay-wall.

This probably won’t work, but we’re going to do it anyway isn’t an idea we’d stand behind.

19 thoughts on “Singleton Steps Down as MediaNews Group, Talks Internet Tubes”

redstateblues says:

January 21, 2011 at 12:32 am

If it’s an affordable price point, it’s possible that people will be willing to subscribe to the online version. Since Singleton is already admitting that they’re not going to make very much money from these subscriptions, this might not chase away as many people as observers anticipated.

On the other hand, if the price is even a little higher than the consumer’s breaking point, then the Prophet could be quickening the pace of its own demise. It’s still got some great reporting in it, but the New York Times it is not.

The wild card in all of this is the iPad, tablet PCs, and eReaders. If the conglomerates can figure out a decent marketing plan for encouraging people to use those methods for reading their content, then the “paper” might die, but the reporting could live on.

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1. gertie97 says:
  
  January 21, 2011 at 1:06 am
  
  unless the conglomerates are willing to pay people reasonably well to do the work. So far, none are.
  
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  1. redstateblues says:
    
    January 21, 2011 at 1:13 am
    
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    1. gertie97 says:
      
      January 21, 2011 at 1:19 am
      
      The big market papers, radio and TVs are negotiable up from there.
      
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      1. GalapagoLarry says:
        
        January 21, 2011 at 7:34 am
        
        That’s big bucks where I come from.
        
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        gertie97 says:
        
        January 21, 2011 at 6:59 pm
        
        But none of the online-only outlets pay anything close to it.
        
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      2. GalapagoLarry says:
        
        January 21, 2011 at 7:38 am
        
        Back in the day, the Grand Junction Daily Sun paid its stringers 8 cents per column inch.
        
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      3. BlueCat says:
        
        January 21, 2011 at 9:28 am
        
        can average more than $100 a day in 6 hour shifts.
        
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2. Colorado Pols says:
  
  January 21, 2011 at 3:51 am
  
  How many people who go to the Post’s website would just leave as soon as they got the pop-up box telling them they needed to pay for a subscription? A sizable percentage would immediately leave and go to 9News.com or somewhere similar. Heck, we’d lose a lot of readers if we just required everyone to sign in for free, because people don’t like to sign up for stuff and because it takes a little extra time to do it.
  
  Content on the Internet succeeds for many reasons, but one of them is speed and ease of use. Is the information online better than information you would find at a library? Not necessarily, but it’s so much easier to find. It’s not just the cost of a pay wall that is the problem — it’s the hassle. It may not be a huge hassle, but it would be enough to turn off a lot of readers. I’ve got to enter my name, my address, pull the credit card out of my wallet…ah, screw it.
  
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  1. GalapagoLarry says:
    
    January 21, 2011 at 7:21 am
    
    Neither content nor price are everything. With similar content available from several sources, you go to the one that makes it easier. The only reason to subscribe to either of the Denver papers was (back in the day of dead tree news) the NYT, CSMonitor or WaPo wouldn’t toss their product on your roof every day.
    
    Today, that said, content of quality and depth can override all other considerations, even immediacy, eg: The Nation, Mother Jones, Foreign Policy, etc, especially when they’re supported by the immediacy, quality and depth of their online supplements.
    
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    1. redstateblues says:
      
      January 21, 2011 at 7:41 am
      
      reporters who cover the Capitol Hill in Denver, and not the one in DC.
      
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  2. Jason Salzman says:
    
    January 22, 2011 at 7:48 pm
    
    A wall around a narrow band of content could work, leaving most of the content free, if you could find the right narrow band content, which has yet to be found in the big newspaper world.
    
    In any case, if you accept that pay walls won’t work, and you’re a newspaper publisher, then you need to stop people from stealing your “free” online content. Hence, the Righthaven lawsuits.
    
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DavidThi808 says:

January 21, 2011 at 5:28 am

He knows a paywall won’t work, yet he’s still wishing to make a paywall work because it’s the one thing he understands. It’s quite common for people to focus on the solution they want rather than one that has good odds of success.

This is the reason that in times of technological change, many large companies disappear. At least he is in the process of getting out of the way and if they bring in someone who will focus on what works – they may have a shot.

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DavidThi808 says:

January 21, 2011 at 5:39 am

When someone comes to the site, if they’re not registered, pop up a page of ads and tell them they must click on one to proceed to the newspaper.

No registration required. No charge. No personal info. But they do have to visit an advertiser.

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1. DavidThi808 says:
  
  January 21, 2011 at 5:40 am
  
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  1. RedGreen says:
    
    January 21, 2011 at 10:30 pm
    
    Do they “owe you”?
    
    It didn’t work and they eventually dropped it.
    
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    1. Canines says:
      
      January 21, 2011 at 10:47 pm
      
      Salon.com dropped just about everything else that used to make the site interesting, as well. (Apologies to Glenn Greenwald.)
      
      But, I just went to the site in order to refresh my memory, and a pop-up ad came up that I had to click to get rid of. Now, it wasn’t a redirect, but still…
      
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      1. RedGreen says:
        
        January 22, 2011 at 5:55 am
        
        use those dismissible pop-ups. But maybe David thought of it first! Retroactively!
        
        I agree Salon ain’t what it used to be, but what is? War Room is still a pretty good political blog, and Greenwald keeps doing what he does best
        
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oo7curtis says:

January 21, 2011 at 1:21 pm

Okay that might be overstating it just a little. But for the most part the AP outlets aren’t reporting much more than right wing talking points. The market for news has grown to include the ability to discuss it and network one’s opinions on it. And the future of news will likely have a kind of interactivity that Dean isn’t ready for. As soon as it’s interesting news we will have it talked about on Twitter and Facebook with people we want to talk to. The point Dean misses is that the market is for ADDED VALUE not autocratic fact distribution.

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