Now that Facebook and Google have taken over advertising, traditional media are looking to reader revenues to sustain journalism. This leaves us with a couple of big questions without a clear answer: how many people are prepared to pay for news? And how much will they pay?
Last week, we got a couple more data points that help. But we still don’t know if the answer, to both questions, is “enough”.
The industry has taken some quiet confidence from the success of The New York Times in building a viable income base out of digital subscriptions. This showed a soft paywall could be a pathway through the crisis of declining advertising revenues.
For the optimists, then, there was more good news with the report that The Washington Post had also broken through the 1 million-paying-subscriber point, although it still trails the NYT at about 2 million.
For the pessimists, there was the reporting of digital subscriptions for US “regional” papers that service states or major cities — the sort of papers we’d call metropolitan newspapers. The largest of these papers, the LA Times, reported that its digital subscriptions were 105,000. The Boston Globe was in second place with about 90,000. Numbers fall away quickly after that, with the Chicago and Minneapolis papers next on 50,000.
These are not small communities. The LA Times is the dominant paper in southern California, with a population about the same as Australia. It leads global coverage in significant sectors, including film and popular culture. (I once met an LA Times journalist with what I reckon is the best job in the world: “Super Hero Correspondent”.)
[What on earth is The New York Times doing in Australia?]
Newsonomics.com’s Ken Doctor concludes from these figures that digital subscribers are currently about 2% of (non-paying) unique monthly views. So, he says, the NYT‘s’ 97 million unique visitors translates to its 2 million digital subscribers.
That’s great for these global voices, but not so much for papers that service particular regions — even regions the size of southern California.
This is not really comparing like with like; “unique visitors” measures readers while “subscriptions” measures payments. Doctor concedes the number of actual visitors might be lower as unique audience numbers are boosted by individuals using multiple devices. And “subscriptions” underestimates total paying readers because multiple readers could share one subscription, either within individual households or workplaces.
Nonetheless, as a rule of thumb, it gives us some sense of the potential of the subscriber market.
In Australia, both Fairfax Media and News Corp have followed the US papers in introducing soft paywalls that allow free access to a finite number of articles each month.
As a result, according to their own end-of-year commentary, Fairfax claims about 236,000 paying digital subscribers across The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and the AFR. The Nielsen Digital Ratings indicate that the SMH and Age online have a monthly unique audience of about 6.2 million people. That’s a ratio of about 4%.
In their end-of-financial-year commentary, News Corp claimed digital-only subscriptions of 360,000, mostly for The Australian and the Herald Sun. Nielsen ratings suggest unique views of about 12.5 million, mostly registered on the non-paywalled news.com.au. That’s a ratio of about 3%. If we break out what we know about The Australian, we can estimate that they have a ratio on their own of about 5%.
These subscriptions numbers come from internal company data, so we’re taking them on trust.
The glass-half-full says that these Australian ratios show that the Australian media are out-performing the US media in converting casual online readers into paying subscribers.
[Can you have a paywall and Australia’s most popular news site? Fairfax’s digital conundrum]
The glass-half-empty says the better you’re doing now, the harder it is to keep growing. Do these figures show we’ve started at a higher floor? Or do they show that the Australian media subscriptions are just closer to the ceiling?
There’s one more lesson the Australian media can learn from these US figures: the success of The Washington Post in breaking through the million-subscriber barrier came off the back of investment in journalism. For over a year now, it has become a must-read in the age of Trump — not for its opinions, but for its news.
In Australia, on the other hand, both Fairfax and News have foreshadowed that this year, just like last, they’ll be cutting their costs, and that means they’ll be cutting their journalism.
So, what is Crikey’s subscription numbers these days?
For Australian journalism it is not a question of ONE problem but of copious problems. The Washington Post has, in effect, a digital subscription readership equal to (more or less) the entire population of greater Washington DC. New York City has a population roughly 8.5 times that of greater DC. However the matter turns, in the main, on content.
One might ask “is a story concerning a collision on the Hume Hwy news for The Australian or the SMH (for the sake of providing an example of two broadsheets) ? Frankly, it isn’t although the topic might amount to local news for the local paper. Is the failure of a system on an airliner news ? Generally; no. So called passenger interviews with headlines “I was so scared” (or whatever) serve only to undermine the paper and emphasise the incompetence of the (sub) editor. An AUTHORITATIVE report relevant the event by (ASTB or CASA or equivalent) IS most certainly newsworthy. Similarly, “man struck by train” does not amount to national news but the antecedents of the event (e.g. possible suicide etc.) do amount to news.
One self-inflicted problem (for newspapers) is the cultivated “shock-writing” that attends any event that could be described as a misfortune. Similarly, the excessive use of adjectives (any article in Crikey will suffice by way of an example) has the effect of undermining the author and the publication; moreover the application of the adjectives is seldom quantified.
The current edition of Crikey provides an example (from Kingsbury regarding Catalan independence. The paragraph begins reasonably well; as indeed does the account to this paragraph.
“In 1939, Catalonia succumbed to generalissimo Francisco Franco’s Falangists, in“
The whole of Spain had “succumbed” to Franco by 1939 but more to the point what purpose does the mocking of Franco serve to the story as a whole? A 14 year old might be temped to write such a sentence but I would be disappointed to see such a sentence crafted by a 17 year old. Continuing :
part due to its own in-fighting (which George Orwell described in Homage to Catalonia), with its language and cultural institutions being banned. Catalans suffered deeply under Franco and memories of this repression, too, drive a desire for separation.
The reference to Orwell is useful (because he did participate in the Spanish Civil War) but we are not acquainted with the “suffering” (which was very real : the principles of Fascism being what they are) or indeed the cultural/ethnic context.
For the sake of brevity I will include this last example.
“In 1978, a few years after Franco’s death, Catalans voted to remain with Spain,
but under an autonomous arrangement.”
.mmm Allowing for personal style, on the one hand, a more comprehensive sentence could be presented as “Franco died in 1975 and the political complexion of the country changed almost over night. Major changes occurred in media and with the relationship that had existed between the people and the constabulary. Tourists were no longer searched or had film exposed to light that, hitherto, possessed “unfavourable” examples of Spain.
Catlalans, in 1978, voted to remain only as an autonomous region …. and PROVIDE SOME DETAIL
In summary, the article patronises anyone with any knowledge of the political events in Spain from c.1900 to the present (including the labour laws for young people) and fails to inform those with no appreciation of Catalan (or Basque or whatever) identity and aspirations. As a year 11 assignment I would fail it outright (but I no longer teach in Australian or New Zealand high schools).
Lastly, were I on the Board of Fairfax (or anywhere else) with a controlling shareholding, I would ensure that the organisation employed only literate personnel. Articles that contained phrases such as “a WINDOW of opportunity” or “this event IMPACTED” or “Mr Smith DISTANCED himself” would find themselves on the “spike” with a warning to their authors. A number of former primary school teachers in their 70s to 90s who were still mobile and lucid could be employed to tutor the unwashed or a fortnight or two.
There is, in my view, a large number of people who do take an interest in their own back yard and what is “over the fence” overseas and would pay for informed articles; i.e. articles that left the reader significantly more edified than was the case prior to reading the article. To this end Crikey does not qualify although Helen Razer comes close and in some instances succeeds.
There was a nerdy journal published from the early 80s to the early 90s with the name “The C Users Journal” A more accurate name could have been “The C Programmers Journal” although it is unlikely that a yank would have accepted the spelling of “programmer”. Events (changes in technology etc.) overtook the journal but otherwise the editors knew what they were doing. One contributor, P.J Plaguer [Philip James], made the (editorial) point that when one attempts the union (of subscribers) one achieves ONLY the intersection [my emphasis]. The observation stamped itself indelibley upon my consciousness and I think it is applicable to more undertakings than, merely, publishing.
The FaceBook brigade doesn’t count. It doesn’t read news papers or if it does it spends less then 5 minutes a month with its collective head in a newspaper if one is to accept an observation of yours truly. Trump, apparently, is “riveted” to CBS and FOX but he does have advisers and knows something about corporate politics. However, in the case of newspapers there is history and it is instructive to read newspapers of 150, 100 and 50 years ago. It is particularly instructive to read newspapers that were competitors of 50+ years ago.
Select the intended readership or take a punt? As “The Monthly” put it in its first issue : “our readership is anyone with $6.95 to spare”(!). Were the decision to be mine I would select an (intended) readership and write directly (and only) to that readership.
… hark, a cry in the wilderness. “Too late!” croaked Quoth the Raven.
We would all appreciate it if you stopped talking about yourselves and started reporting on things that matter. That might help.