Splitting hairsThe Witness is first to lock down online content |
More to follow in SA as paywalls become more palatable.
EAST LONDON - As publishers agonise over whether to put up paywalls on their websites, one South African newspaper - The Witness in Pietermaritzburg - has quietly but decisively locked down its online content.
Existing print subscribers have passwords to access the full online offering and generic content, such as national politics is still free but the message is clear: If you want the unique content produced by the paper's reporters covering KwaZulu-Natal, then you must pay. It began in November last year and it is a bold move, not least because you must cough up R283 over three months for access - just under R100 a month.
So is this a defensive move, designed to protect the paper's print circulation or part of a long-term strategy?
The print circulation of The Witness - which is 50%-owned by Media24 - is certainly under pressure from Independent Newspapers' The Mercury, which under new editor Angela Quintal is lifting its game after years of inertia and breaking some good stories. The last available ABC sales figures (for the third quarter of 2009) for The Witness were 20 771 daily sales, which is rather low for a regional paper with long-standing roots in a community.
The paper's deputy editor, Yves Vanderhaeghen, who also oversees the online operation, says the paper's paid-content move had limited intentions and targets - which have been achieved after three months. He won't say how many subscribers have been signed up but estimates the conversion of browsers to paid-content users to be less than the generally accepted industry standard of one in ten. But then The Witness was not looking to make money out of the move, says Vanderhaeghen, but rather to generate sufficient money to bolster its small web operation.
Even so, the decision was not taken lightly, and Vanderhaeghen wrote an extensive piece in the paper explaining the move.
"It was a delicate step," he says. "We didn't want to antagonise anyone particularly and we had some interesting reactions. There were a few people who reacted by saying ‘I can just get my news from IOL'. But that's fine as we're not in competition with them."
For The Witness, the point is that they should put a premium on what they do best - news, reviews, features and analysis of their community. Before their paywall went up about 60% of users were based in South Africa (with Maritzburg top of the list and Johannesburg second); the remaining 40% of traffic came from outside the country (the top countries being the UK, the US, Australia and New Zealand).
There is potential for The Witness to pick up online subscribers from Johannesburg and overseas as these are clearly former midlands people who like to maintain their connection with "home" through The Witness's website but I'm not sure if the online content is compelling enough for many to justify paying R100 a month.
One of the chief lessons learned over the past three months, says Vanderhaeghen, is that someone who pays for online content is a very different animal to a browser - and now the paper is spending time getting to know more about them, how deep they go into the content and what they want.
So The Witness is already on a learning curve that others are yet to make. There has been a change in the wind regarding paid-for content since the all-powerful Rupert Murdoch announced in August last year that paywalls would go up on his titles such as The Sun, The Times and News of the World. Initially, there were many yelps of "It can't be done (can it?)" and then came much hand-wringing over payment models that might or might not work.
But since the News Corporation media tycoon threw down the gauntlet, publishers all over the world are now looking seriously at paid-content strategies. Two big German newspapers, the Berliner Morgenpost and Hamburger Abendblat, have erected paywalls and France's Le Figaro and L'Express have announced they will follow suit soon. News Corp will do so in June. The New York Times has postponed to 2011 its plans to charge for content but elsewhere in the US, other papers are jumping on the bandwagon this year. The Daily Record in Pennsylvania and the Enterprise-Record in California will start charging in May.
In South Africa, both the Mail & Guardian and Avusa's East London-based Daily Dispatch have said they will charge for online content in the near future while this last week Independent Newspapers started actively marketing e-editions for its substantial stable of newspapers, which crucially meet ABC requirements to be counted as circulation.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations demands that for an e-edition to be counted as a sale, it must be an exact replica of the paper (for example PDFS of the newspaper pages), complete with all the advertising. The Mail & Guardian has had such an edition for a while but then it also gives away its content for free on its website.
The Independent's latest move is significant as it is a different model for getting people to pay for online content. It is also rather savvy as IOL is a commoditised news service too similar to its rivals, News24 and Times Live, to justify users paying for it.
In fact, Rhys Johnstone, the Independent's online editor, says there are no plans to charge for IOL - which since its inception 11 years ago has always only offered a limited content offering from its titles (only about 20%). The rest has been behind a paywall accessible only to existing print subscribers once they click through to the individual titles such as the Cape Times or The Star.
Johnstone says that he believes no one has a winning formula for paid content but that the Independent has been protecting its print circulations for years by not giving away its content for free online.
It will be very interesting to see how the other big online news operations, such as News24 and Avusa's Times Live wrestle with the paid-content issue.
*Media columnist Gill Moodie spent 14 years as a salaried hack in print media in South Africa and the UK before escaping to the blogosphere and freelance journalism. She is the publisher of Grubstreet http://grubstreet.co.za/ in between unpacking and packing the infernal dishwasher and bringing up a four-year-old with attitude.
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