Rest in peace, Projo.com. The Providence Journal put down the ailing website two weeks ago, replacing it with a sleeker providencejournal.com. The new website offers condensed news, but full print edition content will only be available in an eEdition behind a pay wall for those who do not subscribe to the paper.
The pay wall's implementation is unsurprising as the paper is floundering for revenue. In the six months leading up to October, circulation dropped 7 percent. Advertising revenue was halved over the last five years. Hundreds of Journal employees were let go in recent years. Management hopes pricing online content will turn the paper's fortunes around.
We encourage the library to seek an arrangement that enables undergraduates to read the eEdition for free. While access through ProQuest is suitable for research, the database cannot easily fill the Journal's role in the daily lives of news-hungry students.
Unfortunately, the online redesign does not seem especially promising. Using the eEdition — which students can currently access for free — is relatively easy. But by trying to recreate the experience of reading a print edition, navigation is made more cumbersome and the layout more cluttered, particularly when compared to the online version of the New York Times, an internet success. Dan Kennedy, a Northeastern University assistant professor of journalism, wrote on the website Media Nation that the changes reveal a paper "sacrificing its website in order to bolster its print edition, which is where it makes most of its money," a strategy he characterized as short-sighted. Such an effort would also undermine the values of an organization dedicated to informing the public. Indeed, our experience with the old Journal website does not inspire confidence in management's commitment to online content. While many papers invested in blogs and other original online features, the Journal's website was consistently substandard — its political blog, for example, mostly reprinted press releases and articles from the print edition. And why should we pay for access when outlets like WRNI and WPRI offer robust journalism on the web free of charge?
Despite our misgivings, we do hope the Journal finds a way to tap online revenue and build a sustainable business model. While the paper is no longer a behemoth — two decades ago, circulation equaled 20 percent of the state's population — it is still a vital news source. According to Scarborough Research, nearly 50 percent of Providence-area adults read the paper or visited its website during an average week in 2010. Without increased revenue, the paper will eventually lose its ability to act as a government watchdog in a state already lacking an effective opposition party to maintain accountability.
Aside from paying for content, there are no obvious ways we can support newspaper journalism. But college newspapers could play a role in formulating business models that support newspaper-style reporting in the digital age. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported on a company called Press+, which is assisting student papers experimenting with online pay walls. Press+ hopes experimentation on campus will give journalism's emerging leaders new ideas about how to support serious reporting in the real world. While we hope college newspapers can devise means to sustain themselves without resorting to pay walls, we support efforts to find new ways of doing business. If the next generation of journalists helps papers like the Journal reinvent themselves and emerge stronger from these difficult times, it will benefit the public.
Editorials are written by The Herald's editorial page board. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.
