Would you pay for online access to local news?

[love Lantana]

Morning News lays off employees as ad decline continues

their renewal price for subscribers is HUGE, I will be sad to not have the paper anymore but Will not pay these new high rates. I haven't noticed less ads I have noticed less paper, less news.

[admin]

Dallas counts 49K digital subs

A little more than one year after The Dallas Morning News began restricting its online content to consumers willing to pay for access, the paper said it attracted 49,000 digital subscriptions.

The publisher disclosed the number as part of its first-quarter financial results, which it released today.

In addition, A. H. Belo said 91,000 print subscribers, about 40 percent of its approximate 225,000-reader daily subscription base for the six-month period ended March 31, had activated some type of digital account.

The publisher also said that limiting access to proprietary content appeared to improve print subscription acquisition rates, with the retention rate for those readers running 50 percent higher than the rate for non-authenticating subscribers.

The Morning News’ Web traffic stats stacked up this way: Before the initiative was launched, the site, in the year ended March 32, 2011, attracted 5 million unique visitors who generated 39 million page views. That compared with 3.8 million unique visitors and 30 million page views in the period that ended last month. Minutes per user, however, rose from 18 minutes to 30 minutes between 2011 and 2012.

[admin]

The following is the letter that Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s chairman, Warren Buffett, sent to publishers and editors of the company’s daily newspapers and those it is acquiring from Media General Inc. for $142 million: http://www.omaha.com/article/20120525/N ... /705259961