The price is (sc)hot
It would be easier to market newspaper content online than offline. But most publishers continue to dabble happily.
Column Newspaper content could be marketed in a more differentiated way online than offline. Newspaper publishers may have reason to complain because their current business model is no longer working since job advertisements and classified ads have migrated to the Internet and readers are increasingly turning to the Internet instead of consuming news in paper form. But part of the problem - at least in the case of online newspapers - is simply marketing failure: why do newspaper publishers offer content on the Internet for free that they want to sell in printed form? It's as if Mercedes were giving away its new A-Class with all the electronic bells and whistles and at the same time trying to sell shoplifters from the last model series at the highest price.
However, normal newspaper subscription prices for online offerings, as some publishing houses are now trying to push through, seem no less absurd. Reading newspapers online is not an additional benefit, but for many people - especially young people - it is a real alternative to the printed version, and usually a more up-to-date one at that. So why not pass on price advantages to online users if the publishers don't offer them a paper version?
buy, not print a newspaper and no longer have to deliver the paper?
And why can't you just subscribe to the business section, the sports section, the local section or the media page on the web at a lower price instead of the complete work of art that is a newspaper or magazine? As a professor of journalism, I don't have enough time to read ten different papers every day. But I would like to receive ten different media pages, even for a reasonable fee.
In this respect, bankers, doctors and lawyers are hardly any different: they too would like to have access to more information that is important for their respective professional fields without having to subscribe to ten sports, cultural and local sections.
And why do publishers sell individual articles from their archives at such astronomical prices that I think three times about whether I should really afford this luxury? Joey Anuff from the online magazine Suck once scoffed that only newspaper publishers could afford to sell an old movie review at a higher price than the video store next door charges for renting the whole movie.
Long story short: On the one hand, information, especially journalistically researched information, is of course worth something and there is no reason to offer it for free. On the other hand, prices should be in line with the market.
For their printed core product, many newspaper publishers use the four basic tools of marketing quite virtuously: they make decent products - readable, colorful and now also increasingly handy. The price of the print product is surprisingly low in relation to the information value. Publishers also have distribution under control as long as they use conventional distribution channels (i.e. delivery, newsstands, silent sales).
They have even learned a lot in terms of communication: many newspaper publishers produce first-class advertising and maintain their
Brands. Some media groups now operate PR just as professionally as car manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies.
This makes the adventurous marketing concepts with which most publishers still operate on the Internet all the more surprising. Many could learn a lot from discounters such as Denner and Aldi when it comes to pricing their online subsidiaries.
> Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the University of Lugano.
However, normal newspaper subscription prices for online offerings, as some publishing houses are now trying to push through, seem no less absurd. Reading newspapers online is not an additional benefit, but for many people - especially young people - it is a real alternative to the printed version, and usually a more up-to-date one at that. So why not pass on price advantages to online users if the publishers don't offer them a paper version?
buy, not print a newspaper and no longer have to deliver the paper?
And why can't you just subscribe to the business section, the sports section, the local section or the media page on the web at a lower price instead of the complete work of art that is a newspaper or magazine? As a professor of journalism, I don't have enough time to read ten different papers every day. But I would like to receive ten different media pages, even for a reasonable fee.
In this respect, bankers, doctors and lawyers are hardly any different: they too would like to have access to more information that is important for their respective professional fields without having to subscribe to ten sports, cultural and local sections.
And why do publishers sell individual articles from their archives at such astronomical prices that I think three times about whether I should really afford this luxury? Joey Anuff from the online magazine Suck once scoffed that only newspaper publishers could afford to sell an old movie review at a higher price than the video store next door charges for renting the whole movie.
Long story short: On the one hand, information, especially journalistically researched information, is of course worth something and there is no reason to offer it for free. On the other hand, prices should be in line with the market.
For their printed core product, many newspaper publishers use the four basic tools of marketing quite virtuously: they make decent products - readable, colorful and now also increasingly handy. The price of the print product is surprisingly low in relation to the information value. Publishers also have distribution under control as long as they use conventional distribution channels (i.e. delivery, newsstands, silent sales).
They have even learned a lot in terms of communication: many newspaper publishers produce first-class advertising and maintain their
Brands. Some media groups now operate PR just as professionally as car manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies.
This makes the adventurous marketing concepts with which most publishers still operate on the Internet all the more surprising. Many could learn a lot from discounters such as Denner and Aldi when it comes to pricing their online subsidiaries.
> Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the University of Lugano.
