Gazette and the Internet

I'm going to go out on a social limb here and be brash, The Janesville Gazette doesn't understand the internet. They're trying, but they're not there. Scott Angus, the editor, was nice enough to come to my AP Government class and talk about the newspaper. He discussed at great length how the Internet is really challenging the newspaper business model and possibly leading to its death. He talked about how GazetteExtra.com, the online version of the Janesville Gazette, isn't making any money. He had just moments before talked about how the paper generates 70% of its revenue from advertising. As I'm sure it has to others, a thought popped into my head. The Janesville Gazette needs to use online advertising to generate revenue.

I'm going to jump off track here for a minute and talk about Gazette Extra. For those of you unfamiliar with Gazette Extra, it's just a website featuring a lot of the same stories featured in the daily newspaper. It's essentially what you would expect from a medium-sized newspaper. Overall, the site does a great job... for about two weeks. After two weeks or so (I could be wrong on the timeframe) the stories are dropped. Google and company will still point to the articles, but they're no longer there. As you may imagine almost all of these articles lack any commercial value after this point, but serve as an excellent record keeping system. Now back to advertising...

If the Janesville Gazette wants to start making money from webpage views they need to get involved with Google AdSense (or a similar program), allowing them to deliver targeted ads based upon page content that pay-per-click. Users view the new stories and old stories (commonly found via search engines) and click on the ads, money in the bank for the Gazette. It's easy money that will grow with time as the collection of articles online start to grow in number.

I understand the fact that using Google AdSense will produce variable income rates. I understand that fact very well, I have Google AdSense running on this site and the small amount of money I do make is all over the board on a daily basis. The Gazette can counter this variable amount by selling banner ads to local companies, similar to the large ads you currently see in the newspaper.

If the Janesville Gazette uses targeted, pay-per-click advertising they will be able to start to generate online revenue.

Tag: Janesville Gazette
Tag: Newspaper