You often hear that print is on its way out as more people realize that the web is a cheaper and more accessible option to get information. Many newspapers have put more energy into their web presences, often offering a wider variety of rich content that wouldn’t be possible in print form in the first place – things like podcasts and online video.
Some publications charge for their online content in either its entirety or for access to “premium” portions of it. This is one way they make their money on the web. The other big way is of course advertising, and online advertising has proven to minimize cost, and maximize ROI for many advertisers over the years (while growth has slowed in the online advertising industry, it is still growing, I might add).
Newspapers are becoming more integrated with the web than ever before. This is occurring in new and exciting ways. For example, Google has recently begun archiving old issues of newspapers in Google News. Newspapers are finding a great marketing tool in social media, and there are even devices being manufactured that will allow readers to read their papers electronically, just as they read books with Amazon’s Kindle.
Taking all of this into account, it is surprising when you hear about a newspaper that has chosen to make the backbone of its business model ignoring the web altogether. Well, that is what TriCityNews of Monmouth County, N.J. has done as David Carr at the New York Times reports (on the web no less).
Ok, it would be inaccurate to say that TriCityNews has ignored the web completely. They have a website. However, you will not find any articles there. You will find corporate, contact, and print advertising pricing information, and that’s about it.
It’s not that TriCityNews is just behind the times. They just think having content on the web will hurt their print business, which is established and evidently has a pretty solid readership. “Why would I put anything on the Web?” asks TriCityNews owner and publisher Dan Jacobson in the Times article. “I don’t understand how putting content on the Web would do anything but help destroy our paper. Why should we give our readers any incentive whatsoever to not look at our content along with our advertisements, a large number of which are beautiful and cheap full-page ads?”
Jacobson is so anti-web, that he will not have his publication’s brand associated with any kind of web content whatsoever. “I don’t allow our name to be used on any kind of content on the Web — not bulletin boards or listings or anything,” he says. “I don’t want anybody to connect The TriCityNews and the Internet. I don’t want anything that detracts from the paper and the presence of those big, beautiful full-page ads.”
Interestingly, Jacobson does acknowledge that the web is an important tool for journalism as a whole and he admits that he tends to favor it to get his information from a reader’s perspective. He just doesn’t think it’s in the best interest of his own business. I wonder what he thinks of the content rich British Columbia-based Tri-CityNews.com.
