VIA the FTU: All-Access plan is the key to daily print and digital growth

[thelakelander]

In late May, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, one of the nation’s oldest newspapers, announced it would reduce its publication frequency from seven days a week to three days.

Here in Jacksonville, I have been asked the following two questions many times over the weeks and months since:

1) “Is this the direction the industry is headed?’’

2) “What is the future of the Times-Union?’’

full article: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-10-13/story/publisher-all-access-plan-key-daily-print-and-digital-growth

[thelakelander]

Here is a link to the members only site: http://members.jacksonville.com/

[ChriswUfGator]

Not much mystery, since their readership was already in decline even when they were giving it away for free.

T-U's quality has declined, my guess is their solution to tightening margins was to start cutting in the last places that should have been cut. It's turning into an AP wire repeater service at this point, most of the content is not original. If they're putting up a paywall, they better resort back to producing quality original content, that's the only way the WSJ gets away with it. But I suspect they'll just improve nothing, and try and charge for it anyway.

As Stephen already intimated, 3 guesses on how that works out.

[thelakelander]

From my understanding, Jacksonville.com will remain a free access site.

[ChriswUfGator]

Well, we need to know from our readers what they think we should be doing to fill in the gap.

Is there anything that we need to be covering that we presently aren't?

What are we doing well that we should be doing more of?

What are we not doing well that we should be taking suggestions for?

What would those suggestions be?

I've gotten most of my local news off this site for years now. You guys are doing it right, producing actual content. Certainly nothing I can think of. I like the site.