The newspaper in Stockton, California — a city of about 300,000 — will be one of the first papers to take the plunge into an online subscription model this year. As far as pay walls go, the Stockton Record’s plan is rather restrictive — even print subscribers don’t gain full access to the website unless they pony up some extra cash. (You can see the breakdown here.) Editor Mike Klocke wrote a column introducing the plan, and he addressed all the usual questions, including whether a free competitor will come along. “There is value in having professionally trained journalists dig for news, submit public record requests and offer news perspective. That is what we strive to do at The Record and Recordnet.com,” he writes. “There’s also value in new civic and citizen journalism displayed by many of the local bloggers. I applaud their efforts and expect them to grow.”
The problem for the Record is this assumes that 1) “good enough” journalism with more aggressive community integration can’t consistently cover “real” news and 2) that professionally-trained journalists might create a competitive site at much lower cost structure, providing “good enough” investigative journalism and perspective. Many cities, especially here in Seattle, have already shown success on this front at a slightly smaller population scale. And as a newspaper switching to a restrictive pay model in a medium-sized town, I would be watching my back.
(Full disclosure: I co-founded Next Door Media, a network of neighborhood news sites in Seattle. Other successful Seattle sites include West Seattle Blog and Capitol Hill Seattle.)