35 Subscriptions in 3 Months for Newsday Website …

HOLY COW BATMAN … 35 SUBSCRIBERS IN 3 MONTHS.

Talk about your great board room business models. Some how I am thinking this was not the way it was presented in ownership. How many times have you sat in a meeting and had some brain surgeon present a vision that you knew could not work and all the “yes” people drooled over the idea? Welcome to Newsday.com.

Newsday.com was put behind a pay wall in hopes that people would sign up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access. A funny thing happened on the way to the free world wide web … only 35 subscribers signed up for the service. Newsday might want to rethink that business model.

The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect?

So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com?

The answer: 35 people. As in fewer than three dozen. As in a decent-sized elementary-school class.

That astoundingly low figure was revealed in a newsroom-wide meeting last week by publisher Terry Jimenez when a reporter asked how many people had signed up for the site.

The News Day web site redesign and relaunch cost $4 million and with the addition of 35 subscribers, they grossed about $9,000. GOOD GRIEF. Obviously News Day could have received more revenue in outside link based ad revenue that this ridiculous amount. Wouldn’t you have loved to have been a fly on the wall in that board room meeting?

We’ll have to agree with the Moderate Voice on this one, if only select individual sites use a pay platform rather than advertising, readers will just find another web outlet where they can get the news for free.