Boston.com splits in two today, spinning off BostonGlobe.com as a separate, subscription-only website costing $3.99 a week. It’s an attempt by the region’s largest news organization to begin collecting money from online subscribers in an environment where ad revenues are declining.
The Globe’s approach is very different from most other news organizations, which have erected pay walls that allot users a free look at a limited amount of content before they have to start paying for it. The Globe is instead creating two separate websites, one (Boston.com) that will be offered free of charge to users and rely entirely on ad revenue and one (BostonGlobe.com) that will rely primarily on subscription income and some advertising. BostonGlobe.com will be free to print subscribers of the newspaper and be free to everyone during a trial run that goes through Sept. 30.
Marty Baron, the Globe’s editor, said in an interview that he believes readers see Boston.com and BostonGlobe.com as distinct brands. “We have two brands and two different kinds of readers,” he said. “We’re offering them different experiences.”
Boston.com is currently the most popular regional website in the nation, with 6 million unique visitors a month. Baron wants to maintain the current traffic levels at Boston.com, while siphoning off those visitors who go there primarily for Boston Globe coverage. The two websites will each have their own supervising editors and make their own editorial judgments.
What those judgments are will emerge over time, but it’s a safe bet Boston.com will continue to target casual news customers, those interested in entertainment as much as news. A TV monitor in the Globe newsroom shows what people are reading on Boston.com in real time. After my interview with Baron, the top traffic generators on Boston.com were reader-submitted photos and videos of Hurricane Irene, highlights from the 2011 MTV Video Awards, and a story on Beyonce’s baby bump.
Baron said Boston.com will continue to carry significant Globe content, including breaking news, all of the Globe’s season-oriented sports coverage, five stories from other sections of the Globe each day, brief summaries of all other Globe stories, and the Globe’s classified ads. Boston.com will continue to feature fairly intrusive ads, including popups and page takeovers. Users will also continue to click through stories – and the site’s ubiquitous photo galleries — page by page, a strategy designed to increase the site’s page views, which drive advertising rates.
By contrast, BostonGlobe.com visitors will have a very different reading experience. Stories will be presented in a single file. Pictures will be bigger. There will be ads, but fewer of them and no popups. The website will contain all of the Globe’s coverage, including archive material, and easy access to Globe classified ads. (Globe articles will be available for free on an individual basis through search engines and social networking sites.)
Readers of BostonGlobe.com will be able to save stories to an electronic device and read them later without Internet access. Technology developed by the Filament Group of Boston will allow the website to automatically adapt in shape and size to whatever device the reader is using without using an app. “The coolest thing is it just works. It just happens,” said Todd Parker, a Filament partner.
Subscribers to BostonGlobe.com will also receive other benefits, including invitations to lectures and forums and access to the Globe’s staff. Baron said subscribers will be able to do online chats with reporters, accompany reporters as they cover stories, and even have lunch with him.
The unveiling of BostonGlobe.com comes as the newspaper is trying to cope with a combination of declining print subscribers and drooping ad revenues. The Globe is owned by The New York Times, which reports financial data for the Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette together as the New England Newspaper Group.
During the second quarter of 2000, the New England Newspaper Group reported total revenue of $189 million, of which 78 percent came from advertising, 20 percent from circulation, and 2 percent from other sources. Eleven years later, during the second quarter of 2011, revenue had fallen 46 percent to $102 million, with advertising accounting for 51 percent of the total and circulation 39 percent.
In essence, circulation revenue as a percentage of total revenue rose sharply, in part because the price of print subscriptions was increased even as the number of daily subscribers dropped by 53 percent to 219,214 and Sunday subscribers fell 51 percent to 356,652. The Globe is currently the 25th largest newspaper in country by circulation.
To deal with the downturn in revenue, the Globe has reduced its staff, closed facilities, and demanded givebacks from employees. The effort to build a subscription base for the Globe online is an attempt to boost circulation revenue by charging people who are reading the Globe online now for free.
The risk is that many of the remaining print subscribers will like the new online reading experience with BostonGlobe.com and abandon the print product altogether for the online one, a shift that could reduce revenues further. A weekly home delivery subscription is currently $15, while the online version is just $3.99, a substantial savings. Sunday-only subscribers to the print newspaper pay $3.50 and they also will receive free access to BostonGlobe.com, which could spur daily subscribers to switch to Sunday only.
Baron said the quality of the Globe’s journalism is what is prompting the newspaper to attempt to sell online subscriptions. “We are doing distinct journalism,” he said. “It’s something that people need to pay for.”
