Print media struggles to stay afloat

By: Rebekah Baldwin
Edited by: Kate Parham

In an age where the death of print journalism is heralded as inevitable, publications must get creative about the way they do business.

As subscribers and advertising dollars dwindle and revenues fall, organizations are no longer able to rely on their standard operating procedures, and innovative new business model are being created.

One way that owners have tried to stay afloat is by laying off employees and enforcing strong cut backs.

The Athens Banner Herald is among those organizations that have reduced its staff to try to make up for lost advertising revenue.

“In the past year we had about a 10 percent staff reduction, which in real numbers is four people,” said Melissa Hanna, executive editor of the paper.

Although this does immediately save money, in the long run it is reducing quality. Fewer reporters means less time spent on each story, and a smaller budget restricts the scope of journalism.

“When you reduce your writing staff, your editing staff, you cover less and you cover not as well,” said Conrad Fink, professor of newspaper management and journalism ethics at the University of Georgia. “But it’s necessary because these newspapers are attempting to preserve profit and without profit they go out of business.”

For a while it looked like the advertising revenue from websites would support the industry, or at least make the sites profitable, but this is not holding up. Total advertising expenditures were down nearly 17 percent in 2008, and internet advertising fell for the first time since its introduction according to a report by the Newspapers Association of America. Even if the downturn is temporary, an industry of this magnitude cannot rely on one source of revenue.

Although most news sites are free and ad supported, a few, such as The Wall Street Journal, require subscriptions to view their content. But with so much content available for free, it can be difficult to get consumers to pay for a monthly subscription, especially when they usually only want to read one article.

Only 25 percent of an online news site’s visitors are “core loyalists”- individuals who log on to the site at least 20 days out of a month, according to data gathered by the American Press Institute. The remaining 75 percent of visitors view the site only 3 days a month or less, most likely because readers don’t want to get locked into a single publication for their news.

An alternative to the subscription model is to start charging micropayments to view online content. Many believe that readers would be willing to pay for content if it was cheap and easy.

“It depends on how cheap it is,” said Tien Phan, a third-year accounting and advertising major at the University of Georgia.

Phan explained that if the articles were priced comparably to a song on iTunes, she probably would not pay, but if they were a fraction of that price she would. She had other concerns about eliminating free content on media Web sites as well.

“If they make it too expensive it might discourage people from reading,” Phan said.

Some, such as economist Dean Baker, have suggested a government-supported media, but others believe this lack of separation between government and media is too dangerous.

Baker has proposed the use of “artistic freedom vouchers,” according to an article by the Nieman Journalism Lab. Under this plan, every adult in the country would get a $100 government voucher which they could then transfer to any person or company putting new intellectual property into the public domain. Even though the citizens of America are the ones deciding where the money goes, it’s still coming from the government.

“Once you take money from someone you become beholden to them,” said Fink.

Paste, an Atlanta-based music and lifestyle magazine, tried a tactic most people never expected
to see. They launched a campaign this summer called “Save Paste,” in which they asked readers, via Twitter, to donate to the publication to keep it from having to shut down. In addition to asking for donations, Paste also auctioned off memorabilia and other merchandise.

Although the campaign may have saved the magazine for the time being, as evidenced by the publication of its recent issues, this is probably not a viable option for most publications- unless, like Paste, they have a niche in the market and loyal readers.

Kachingle, a site that accepts user donations and then disperses them to the websites of the users’ choice, launches this fall. While users are not limited to news sites and blogs, that is the target market.

According to its website, www.kachingle.com, “Kachingle is a way for readers to choose and equitably share their $5 monthly contribution with the web sites they appreciate the most.”

There is no limit to how many sites a Kachingle user can choose to support, just as there is no limit to how much a user can donate each month. While $5 is the starting point, users can determine how much to give based on what their peers are giving.

A pediatrician in Idaho will be able compare his donation to that of other pediatricians in Idaho, or he can check how much his Facebook friends are giving.

“People are very influenced by these social signals,” said Typaldos.

A user who donates $10 a month to The New York Times, Vogue and a music blog will be able to display that on Facebook said Typaldos.

Kachingle hopes to be “a projection of who [users] are, which is hard to do on the internet,” said Typaldos.

Typaldos believes that as people see that their peers are donating to Kachingle to support their favorite websites, they will donate as well.

The question seems to be if the public will ever value content- content that they have become accustomed to getting for free- enough to start paying for it.