MediaNews Group, owner of the Denver Post and 53 other daily newspapers plans to start charging for online access to all its newspaper content on its websites.
MediaNews CEO William Dean Singleton wrote a memo to employees saying, “We cannot continue to give all our content away for free.”
William Dean Singleton
“We continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free,” the memo said. “Not only does this erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business — the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily.”
Under the proposed plan, nonpaying readers would have access to shorter versions of articles, while print subscribers would continue to receive full access to the newspaper’s website for free.
The memo also details the decline of print advertising as well as slower growth for the company’s online advertising.
“Our interactive revenue growth has slowed because it has been too closely tied to our print classified business, which has suffered with the advent of Craigslist and other free online classified opportunities,” the MediaNews memo says.
“[And] we are not significantly extending the reach of our audience, as our online products too closely resemble the newspaper, and thus fail to meaningfully reach the next generation of readers.”
MediaNews did not say when it would start to charge for online content. The company said it will “build a strategic plan that places a value on our content, protects our core print business, extends the reach of our audience, and creates new revenue opportunities online.”
