Newsday.com Fails! Who to Blame?

Posted: January 29, 2010

Over the last few days there has been a buzz around Newsday.com, the Long Island newspaper that the Dolans bought for quite a few pennies. They decided to close their website for only paid subscription, either Optimum Cable customers or a print subscription to the newspaper.

So where did they fail? Why only 35 subscription in 3 months? It is destiny to sink? While many questions arise from this, many are looking for whom to blame. A $4 million dollars investment and all that they got was a failed ticket. Some might say they are now the “joke” of the newspaper industry. Whoever thought on making things differently aimed for a higher recognition to hit not a brick wall but a reinforced titanium wall. I sense someone’s retirement has come…

The worst part is that the local business advertising in this fiasco. If there is any, in a glance you can see Google.com ads and other source of third-party ads provider. Maybe their sales force is having a hard time to sell local ads?

So really who is to blame in this multi-million dollar sinking situation? Many can be blame for this, but really the people to blame is the people managing the online portion. If these people where competent enough they would have advocate to stop and avoid this. Online is an entirely different media, you can't come and implement it with an old print publication mindset.

Anyone can build a website but it takes a real online savvy to determine a good way to implement new channels for generating revenue. The order was to ask – “Why paid a subscription?” Especially if there are many other sources that you can still be read for free? Why not create a new portion of the site for only paid subscription with enhance functions? Why not enhance our print activity with our website? Here are two tips for doing exactly that:

1) Create a special session for paid customers where they can read the news in-real time while delaying the publish on the free version.

2) Copy the successful Wall Street Journal model. Comments in news and other features are only available to paid subscriptions.

Does the online version still have a chance to be resurrected? Yes, first they need to accept that they have failed in order to rise from the ashes. Consider revert it back to a free version. Think about follow the hiring of a more savvy online team to get results.

The time to cry is over; the time to re-build has just begun. C’mon Newsday – I know you’ve got the fight in you!