Legal Commentary

Displaced Rocky Mtn. News Reporters to Lanch Online Subscription Site

By Jeralyn

When the Rocky Mountain News went under, many of the reporters who were left without a job banded together online at I Want My Rocky and kept reporting.

Today they held a press conference. They have some capital (from three Denver entrepreneurs) and will launch an online paper May 4, provided they get 50,000 paying subscribers by April 23.

The proposed publication would be called InDenverTimes.com. Subscriptions will be available on a tiered-rate system, with 12-month subscriptions priced at $4.99 a month, six months for $5.99 a month and three months for $6.99 a month.

News will be free to all, but the other features will require a subscription. [More...]

What are the other features? "News analysis, insight, online chats and other features."

Can this model succeed?

I have been reading I Want My Rocky every day since the the paper folded. It was really a good looking site, color-wise (red, black and white), font-wise and layout-wise. Since they've decided on the venture, both I Want My Rocky and InDenver Times (not exactly a catchy name) have changed their look and gotten rid of the eye-catching red. They just aren't inviting or exciting. I hope they spend some of their new capital on some good web designers.

The New York Times fell on its face when it charged for the opinion pages. I prefer Salon's model where you get to read for free if you watch a high-tech, usually interesting ad for a few seconds, but I guess you need advertisers to be able to do that.

I think in order to sell a subscription publication these days, particularly online, you have to offer something readers can't get elsewhere. News alone won't cut it. And I don't think people will pay for online chats. Not to mention, every local news station has reporters writing articles these days, all available for free, with video.

On the other hand, The Wall St. Journal charges a pretty buck (aside from providing free access to a handful of articles each day) and it seems to be doing well.

I'd like to see InDenver Times succeed. I think it should have waited and done more research on whether a Salon or HuffPo model would have worked -- or studied the WSJ to see what makes the subscription model work for them.

My advice to them for now: Contact Henry Copeland and Blogads ... they could get some revenue rolling for the site pretty quickly. Go heavy on sports analysis, Denver is such a big sports town. And bring back the red, white and black and make the font friendlier.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 16, 2009 (boomark / email).