A reader asks about the Bee's e-Edition:"Is this something new? When I logged onto the sacbee.com site this morning I saw an ad that allows me to subscribe to the e-edition of the Bee for $1.00 a week. The rate is the same for either the 26 week or 52 week subscription! I don’t recall seeing this option before. The ad claims you will be able to access the whole Sacramento Bee as it appears in the print edition."
The obvious question is, why would somebody pay $1.00 a week when the online Bee is free?
I'm guessing the Bee is exploring charging for certain online content.
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15 comments:
McClatchy and their complicated, and oh so brilliant business and marketing strategy is now taking hold.
1. First, print lies and liberal gibberish that even fellow traveling liberals won’t buy.
2. Next, lie to readers telling them that your paper edition, now postage stamp size, is worth as much as the Wall Street Journal, and raise your price.
3. Finally, because the Wall Street Journal also charges for on-line content, gently tell your final lie, and remind your on-line readers that strategy #2 now also applies to on-line only content.
Brilliant strategy
What content is good enough to charge for? All they write about is state politics, wine and cycling.
At the Star if you are a subscriber (print) you get the e version for free.
The e-edition is a direct facsimile of the print edition, with ads, comics, etc. It is a different product than the online edition. Someone who would want a subscription to the Bee but might not want to get it in print would like this product. Or someone who no longer lives in the area and gets a by-mail subscription but doesn't want to wait two or three days would like this.
Lots of papers do this. It's not new.
The "E-dition" is an outsider service provider's successful con-job of MNI management.
It''s nothing more that re-worked PDF file's gleaned from the publishing systems Postscript workflow.
The outside contractor is getting big bucks while the boys in the basement do all the work.
I wonder how much of the buck a week goes to paying the fees to the outside service provider?
Last I heard, even when the E-dition was "free", the only subscribers were Bee Manaagement.
No one else want to bother with clunky Page PDFs.
This will fail like digital tearsheets have failed with advertisers.
Charging for content will accelerate the demise of the liberal rag. Bring it on. Please. Please. Please.
The only bright spot in the MNI universe has been the eyeballs on the web editions. With charging for content, that bright spot will dim along with the stock's prospects.
Actually the e-edition is not failing at my paper. It is now used for all Newspaper in Education copies and has reduced newsprint costs and delivery hassles while growing NIE circulation. We've sold thousands of other non-NIE subs, too. You bitter MNI naysayers just don't want anything to work.
Why The AP plans to hold some web content off the wire (Nieman Journalism Lab)
Series: AP's online strategy
In a break with tradition, The Associated Press plans to prevent members and customers from publishing some AP content on their websites. Instead, those news organizations would link to the content on a central AP website — a move that could upend the consortium’s traditional notions of syndication.
That’s one revelation from a document we obtained (labeled “AP CONFIDENTIAL — NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION”) that offers new insight into how the AP is planning to reinvent itself on the Internet.
The seven-page briefing, entitled “Protect, Point, Pay — An Associated Press Plan for Reclaiming News Content Online,” was distributed to AP members late last month. It provides greater detail about the tracking device that will be attached to AP content and describes their plans to create topic pages around news stories to rival Wikipedia and major aggregation sites. And in an hour-long interview last night, the AP’s general counsel, Srinandan Kasi, also shed light on how the consortium views reuse of its material across the Internet.
I’ll be wading through the document and what we’ve found in a series of posts beginning today. (You can subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter if you don’t want to miss anything.) We’ll eventually post the full document, too. And as we go, feel free to comment and ask questions so we can flesh this out. I think you’ll find this stuff applies to all news organizations, not just the 1,500 newspapers that own the AP.
NIE is just a scam to boost Circulation numbers so that advertisers are duped into higher rates. No copy left behind in the circ scam.
You really think a 8 year old is going to screen scroll on an page PDF?
Even the kids know that is gorkish.
1) The e-edition is a web-edition of the paper, that looks like a paper, for people who are more comfortable reading their news that way. Nobody has to take it, and younger readers are more used to websites, while their parents may be more comfortable with a newspaper format.
2) Sacramento Bee subscribers also get the e-edition free. The $1/week is for non-subscribers.
from the website:
"Daily print Bee subscribers can access for free at..."
3:24:
Most of the teachers I've talked to like it. Using the site, they can tell the kids, in familiar terms, "Turn to page 8".
If you click on a story, it pops open a window with the full story (including whatever's on the jump page) and they can copy & paste it into an editor so they can rewrite, edit, tear it up, whatever.
This may be one of the weakest posts on this blog yet. E-editions have been available for years at many newspapers. And it is more than a PDF of the page. You can zoom in on article, click on jump lines to go to the continuation of a story and click links in a story to go to those web page. Some subscribers take the e-edition so that they can read an exact replica of the newspapers when traveling.
NIE (A program to provide free newspapers to schools so kids can read) is a scam. I personally talked to a teacher that told me that the school used the papers to RECYCLE and use the money for parties. They did not even distributed the papers they just loaded them up in a cart and took them in once a month.
Anonymous said...
Actually the e-edition is not failing at my paper. It is now used for all Newspaper in Education copies and has reduced newsprint costs and delivery hassles while growing NIE circulation. We've sold thousands of other non-NIE subs, too. You bitter MNI naysayers just don't want anything to work.
August 12, 2009 2:51 PM
...Yep, put more production people out of work!
Yeah, but can you line your birdcage with it?
As someone stated, the E-edition is the "print" edition in pdf form. It is NOT the same as the dotcom version. Please, gripers, get a grip. If you still work for a newspaper, you act as if you want it to fail. Complete idiocy.
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