Canberra Times cutting back website content
Posted on March 30, 2009 by by jr
I’ve noticed recently that the Canberra Times has started putting a new tag line at the bottom of all their online articles:Â “For more, pick up a copy of today’s Canberra Times”
Given that the Canberra Times (Dead Tree Edition) already tends to be pretty light on with in-depth local news and what little they do publish generally tends to be “yesterday’s news tomorrow”, I think all this will do is succeed in making themselves more and more irrelevant as a media source.
The Internet is revolutionizing how traditional news media is perceived and I think it is time that the Canberra Times realized that their archaic paper based editions have a limited viable commercial life ahead. Instead of trying to push people back to paper they should be looking at monetizing their online presence by providing detailed reporting, analysis and commentary – content that would be worth paying a nominal subscription to access. (think along the lines of what Crikey currently does).
Remember most of the cost of a traditional paper is tied up in the print materials, production and distribution, providing that content plus more online would reduce their costs by many orders of magnitude.
I forsee very shortly if the papers, like the Canberra Times, don’t see the light soon they will end up going the way of some of the papers in the US and simply become a footnote in history.
14 Comments to “Canberra Times cutting back website content”
"Leave a Comment"
Typeboard uses automatic spam filters, sometimes comments are sent to moderation
Please read our Code of Conduct
What are they thinking? unless they do want to be the first australian newspaper to go down.
(Report comment)
I see it as being a bit of a lame attempt to convert internet readers into dead-tree purchasers. The only problem is they’ve forgotten to take into account that people who read their news online aren’t loyal (enough) to a newspaper brand to get up from behind their computer and go out to the newsagent. They are much more likely to type the main points into Google and read it somewhere else. And then not return to the CT website. They’re losing clicks as well as readers.
Fail.
L
(Report comment)
hmmm. well done CT. If I am in a country that doesn’t give me access to the CT, and i want to catch up on news from home, the internet is ideal. if, however, the article is incomplete, I will probably go to news.com.au – they don’t limit the article to increase the deadwood readers…
(Report comment)
The CT website is the reason there’s a number of new fresh online news sources cropping up in the local region, giving local news fast and interactively.
If the CT wants to die out, then I don’t think many will miss it.
(Report comment)
Very annoying!
They’ll lose me if I can’t read the whole article online.
Quite silly in a place like Canberra where things like dead trees do tend to get noticed.
(Report comment)
Just watched this:
TED Talks: Jacek Utko is a little-known newspaper designer whose redesigns not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHuH8P_Vqc0
It doesn’t address the issue of content (or lack of it) but maybe the CT (and other papers) may be able to learn a few lessons from experiences overseas.
(Report comment)
It might hold off the worst for a while, but save them? I doubt it.
Mind you, the CT is pretty determined to dig its own grave regardless.
L
(Report comment)
Maybe we should suggest it to them?
(Report comment)
Found this on Tech Crunch: http://tinyurl.com/cjdy9j
It appears that newspapers (especially in the US) want things all their own way.
(Report comment)
Interesting, that needs to have its own post I reckon.
(Report comment)
An interesting article on Fairfax
(Report comment)
The future as outlined by the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/technology/start-ups/13hyperlocal.html
(Report comment)
Nice article, specially when it is coming from the NY Times.
(Report comment)
[...] continued decline of the newspaper as I originally pointed out several months ago in this article: Canberra Times cutting back website content Canberra Times Homepage (with local Canberra content) The Canberra Times RSS Feed [...]
(Report comment)