A User-First Framework for Sustaining Local News - Harvard ...

editors accountable to the reader/owners—this is user‐first not just in aspiration, but in
structure.” 63
In Pittsburgh, the Post‐Gazette has introduced a new online service built on the
concept of extra fee for extra service. This one does include some pay walls. PG+,
introduced in September 2009, spotlights special sports material but also provides a
range of features and blogs focused on politics, music and life in Pittsburgh. Post‐Gazette
editor David Shribman says more than 90 percent of the content is original to PG+—as
opposed to material previously available free online and then walled off. The site also
includes the kind of user perks that many publications are making available to home
delivery customers—discounts at area museums, two‐for‐one specials at restaurants, etc.
Shribman declined to reveal how many users have signed up for the service, which
costs $3.99 a month or $35.88 a year. His assessment: “We’re making steady progress
and we’re not going to abandon it.”
Part of the experiment involves exploration of new markets, including a group he
calls the “Pittsburgh Diaspora.” Shribman said the paper is trying to see how it might
tweak PG+ to provide special services to the estimated 500,000 former Pittsburgh
residents “who live elsewhere—except for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the Web—
and who care about their hometown and their hometown teams.”
The Mystery of Who Pays for What and Why Online
Among the data points PG+ is still trying to sort out: “We have the oddest surge in
subscribers on Tuesdays. Maybe it’s because it’s the day after the day after (the Steelers’
games on Sundays), and people are saying, ‘Did you see that on Plus?’ But we really
have no idea. It’s a mystery.” 64
Steve Brill, co‐founder of one of several vendor services in development to help
publishers collect user fees, says that’s the nature of paid content.
“I guarantee that in six or nine months,” he told Poynter Online’s Steve Myers in
November 2009, “we can look at these 16 [ways of monetizing content] and we can
declare together that five of them were totally stupid, ridiculous, and why were we
screwing with them?” 65
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