Stop The Presses – Seattle P-I Goes Online-Only
Seattle’s oldest newspaper, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will publish its final print edition today. The company plans to maintain an online-only presence with seattlepi.com, making it the largest paper to go 100% digital so far.
Meanwhile, staffers of the recently shuttered Rocky Mountain News are trying to get a subscription-supported web news site, InDenverTimes.com off the ground. They’re looking for at least 50,000 commitments of $4.99 a month to launch the site. Some news would be free, but premium content would be available to paying subscribers.
With few exceptions, consumers have been unwilling to pay for news content online when so much is available for free. The New York Times tried a premium online subscription model called TimesSelect, but gave up in 2007 and freed their online content in order to leverage traffic from search engines and blogger links to increase advertising revenues.
