{"id":650202,"date":"2013-04-02T18:34:27","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T22:34:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=226991"},"modified":"2013-04-02T18:34:27","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T22:34:27","slug":"why-i-admire-the-oc-register-even-though-i-disagree-with-almost-everything-they-are-doing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/650202","title":{"rendered":"Why I admire the OC Register, even though I disagree with almost everything they are doing"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a post earlier today, I took a look at what the new owners of the Orange County Register<\/em> have been doing to try and revive the newspaper<\/a>, based on a long interview I had with co-owner Eric Spitz \u2014 a list that includes the hardest of all paywalls, killing off most of the paper\u2019s blogs, and doubling down on print as a source of revenue. Even though I disagree with their approach in almost every case, Spitz and his partner Aaron Kushner deserve some credit for putting their money (a substantial amount of it) where their mouths are.<\/p>\n

I confess I\u2019ve been rather fascinated with the Register<\/em> ever since Spitz and his partner Aaron Kushner acquired it last year and almost immediately started implementing some fairly dramatic changes. Unlike some newspaper owners, they didn\u2019t just start cutting costs to try and save money<\/a> \u2014 the way Advance Publications has with newspapers like the Times-Picayune<\/em> in New Orleans, for example (media analyst Ken Doctor has called Kushner<\/a> the \u201canti-Advance\u201d).<\/p>\n

Serve your readers \u2014 everything else is secondary<\/h2>\n

Instead, Kushner and Spitz started spending money on the newspaper, pouring tens of millions of dollars into the Register<\/em> newsroom \u2014 which is now a staggering 50 percent larger than it used to be \u2014 hiring reporters and editors, and launching almost a dozen new sections.<\/p>\n

\"money<\/a><\/p>\n

However you look at it, that\u2019s a substantial commitment to the principle<\/a> Spitz and Kushner operate on, which is that serving subscribers is the only thing that matters \u2014 not advertisers, not free readers on the web, not the \u201csocial conversation\u201d around their content. Just readers who pay. In a sense, it\u2019s a more extreme version of the philosophy that led Andrew Sullivan to<\/a> launch a subscription-based site with no advertising (although Sullivan, who will be at our paidContent Live conference<\/a> on April 17, allows for casual web reading).<\/p>\n

As a number of media observers \u2014 including me \u2014 have pointed out, if you are going to put up a paywall, your content had better be exceptionally good<\/a>. Spitz says he and Kushner are trying to boost the value they are offering to readers by putting resources into the paper (although whether enough people see that value in the same way remains to be seen).<\/p>\n

A strong commitment to a vision<\/h2>\n

If you think of the media industry\u2019s approach to the web as a spectrum, the Daily Mail<\/em> is at one end, with a totally web-native and non-paywalled strategy<\/a>: like BuzzFeed or any number of other web properties, the Mail<\/em> is going to live or die based on viral content, millions of readers and digital advertising. The Orange County Register<\/em> is at the complete opposite end: no free content whatsoever, a hard paywall and no interest in viral content or social media (readers can always email Register<\/em> writers if they have something to say, Spitz told me).<\/p>\n

\"newspaper<\/a><\/p>\n

To be clear, I think the anti-social aspects of what the Register<\/em> is doing are bad \u2014 not just for the newspaper, but for society as a whole, since discussion around news events has public value, and engaging with readers has journalistic value. And I\u2019m not sure I buy the argument that print-advertising revenue will rebound and even grow if the Register<\/em> puts more money into the paper. I think the advertising industry is being disrupted just like the media industry is, and I\u2019m not convinced the genie will go back in the bottle quite so easily.<\/p>\n

That said, however, at least the Register<\/em> isn\u2019t trying to suck and blow at the same time, the way so many other newspapers are. Spitz and Kushner aren\u2019t trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and hoping that they can be both web-native and print-focused at the same time \u2014 they are unabashedly committed to their view, and they are pouring everything they have into it, and that deserves some respect.<\/p>\n

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Shutterstock \/ Voronin76<\/a> and Flickr users 401K<\/a> and George Kelly<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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