Upgrades coming to Times-Union and Jacksonville.com

[thelakelander]

Jacksonville.com is going the way of the Tallahassee Democrat and Orlando Sentinel.  In upcoming weeks, you'll have to pay for certain online content.  I'm still confused to why newspaper companies believe that its a good growth/revenue model.  I guess we're about to find out if Jaxsons will be receptive to the idea.

full article: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-09-10/story/upgrades-coming-times-union-and-jacksonvillecom

[BridgeTroll]

Jacksonville.com is going the way of the Tallahassee Democrat and Orlando Sentinel.  In upcoming weeks, you'll have to pay for certain online content.  I'm still confused to why newspaper companies believe that its a good growth/revenue model.  I guess we're about to find out if Jaxsons will be receptive to the idea.

full article: http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2012-09-10/story/upgrades-coming-times-union-and-jacksonvillecom

Seems like an act of desperation to me.  I visit local news paper sights around the country for sports news and many of them are charging now to access their content.  I do not think it will last long... but by then the damage will have been done... sigh...

[fsujax]

yeah, i will not be paying, when I can get it from here, jax business journal or the Daily Record at least the news I care about anyway.

[If_I_Loved_you]

yeah, i will not be paying, when I can get it from here, jax business journal or the Daily Record at least the news I care about anyway.

I stopped getting the Fla Times Union 15 years ago or so and I don't miss it. But my question is who owns the Jax Business Journal because if the FTU does you soon will have to pay to read this paper also. Most of the business journal's I read around the United States you have to pay to see the meat of the stories.

[Ocklawaha]

Watching the old new print media die, is like the long death of the privately run passenger trains in the USA. Ridership falls off, so we jack up prices and eliminate all secondary connections, which of course drops mainline ridership a bit more. Not to worry, the management will just eliminate the sleeping cars, dining car and lounge and replace them with an 'automatic buffet car' aka: vending machines with a few tables. Then we jack up the prices again. Ridership goes into free-fall, so we close stations, don't worry you can just pay the conductor and, oh, by the way, we'll slash the car cleaning staff and only send em through the wash racks every month or so...

Result? DUH!

So keep up the good work TU, might I suggest doubling the price of a paper, cutting down the size, slashing staff, and lets charge for on-line content. You can follow those lemmings right over the cliff or you can innovate, but then that wouldn't be the Jacksonville way, would it?

[fsujax]

I already pay for the Jax Business journal, I will not pay for the times union.

[jcjohnpaint]

So what?  The story is on MJ sometimes days before it is in the TU. 

[John P]

So what?  The story is on MJ sometimes days before it is in the TU.

Like the breaking story how taco lu is moving to murray hill? No offense but you cannot rely on anonymous bloggers for real news. Some of it will be true and some of it will not. Metrojacksonville bloggers link a lot of stories back to TU. I will pay a small amount for online TU.

[wsansewjs]

TU / Jacksonville.com should learn and take the FolioWeekly route!

-Josh

[fieldafm]

Like the breaking story how taco lu is moving to murray hill? No offense but you cannot rely on anonymous bloggers for real news.

That was me and I am hardly anonymous... I was standing there when it happened.  In the end, Don and Debbie couldn't make it work to their satisfaction and subsequently got a great opportunity to buy the Homestead building and changed course.

That happens in real estate all the time.  Look at the now defunct Julies Urban Grocery concept or the constant reincarnations of the Laura Street Trio.

I will say, the staff at the TU generally does a pretty good job of fact checking stories and gathering good background info.  They are ahead of the Biz Journal in that department from time to time. 

Additionally, a lot of issues discussed here are picked up by the more traditional media outlets (believe me I get called on them from time to time).  People from City leaders to print/onair media outlets read MetJax to gather information.  That's a fact.

Furthermore, they also get annoyed when articles are copied and pasted in full here instead of linked back to them as it ciphons web traffic away from their site... which is a perfectly reasonable concern.

TU / Jacksonville.com should learn and take the FolioWeekly route!

Meh, Folio hired Denise away from the TU for several reasons... not the least of which is her plans to make Folio Weekly's online presence 10 times more robust than it is now.

[Lunican]

Whatever the TU does, it's really in everyone's best interest that they survive. Jacksonville will not be better off without a local newspaper.

[Bativac]

I won't be paying for the TU online and I can't see most Jacksonvillians paying for it, either. The majority of their stories seem less about actual current local newsworthy issues and more about incidents of a criminal nature, or sports, or heart-wrenching tragedies. Certainly we need a local paper - I just wish the reporters were more proactive and aggressive regarding their reporting.

This brings up an interesting issue though - I agree that we need a local paper, which means reporters need to be paid. But who pays them? Not many of us want to pay for online content. Printing a newspaper adds another cost to the equation. So how do they bring in enough money to pay journalists? Advertising? How to they justify charging ad rates high enough to cover their costs, and to pay a good enough salary to keep decent reporters?

[Debbie Thompson]

You can't expect a daily newspaper to be free and survive.  Folio Weekly is just that...weekly...and much smaller.  That model won't work for a daily newspaper.  TU couldn't sell enough ads to pay for it.  It takes a huge effort to print a daily paper.  Those presses are three stories high and have to be maintained constantly.  You have to pay reporters, pressmen, editors, and other staff.  Buy paper and ink, and pay people to deliver it.

And then people complain when you won't make it available for free?  When you have the audacity to charge for it?  Really?

[coredumped]

If the TU goes under the city is not without professional journalists-every local news broadcast has them. WJXT could easily print some of their stories that they have already edited/published on their website. They could also include some of the discussion (which is often the most valuable part of a website).

Sure, it wouldn't be as big as the TU, but the TU has been getting smaller, and increasing the ads.

[river4340]

The problem the T-U has is the same one daily newspapers all over the country have: Many of their readers now read them online. But they don't make the ad revenue online like they do in print.

And, of course, there's competition. Newspapers used to make a ton of money off classified ads. Now  Craigslist is free. There's no business model out there that competes with free.