Louisiana Baptist Message pay-to-read Web launched (skids)

The Louisiana Baptist Message's new pay-to-read Web site apparently skidded on launch. They have rolled out a lurid red, top-heavy, new Web design which combines mostly subscriber-only content, some of which is free elsewhere, with incomplete sections (Plan of Salvation, Focus, Image Archive, Links of Interest).

A Southern Baptist official state newspaper with an empty Salvation section?

It is too early to draw lasting conclusions, but the early returns are not encouraging.

We greeted as suicidal their announcement last year of pay-wall plans. And they're not disappointing us. The Missouri Word & Way saw a slight decline (-8.18%) in Web traffic while the North Carolina Biblical Recorder saw a sharp increase (+160.7%) during the period of sharp Louisiana Baptist Message decline(-55.9%). The yearly change percentages are +428.77% for Word & Way, +105.84% for the Biblical Recorder and -19.02% for the Baptist Message.

The Baptist Message changes also disrupted existing links to its earlier content. For example, their redesign broke the links to a Louisiana Baptist Messenger Editor Kelly Boggs editorial in CounterFactual Kelly Boggs.

The combined effects of putting up a pay wall, redesign/launch errors and uninspiring content are likely to keep the Baptist Message in the Web readership basement. Or below.
Should they be nominated for Web Pages That Suck?
We will follow their experiment with flagging interest.

What can State Baptist pubs can expect from a Web pay wall?

It depends, as with other publications. The American Press Institute and ITZBelden surveyed 2,400 U.S. newspaper executives. Only 51% think pay walls will work and they have clear ideas about how many paying online subscribers [.pdf] (presentation slides [.pdf]) to expect:

Respondents report a wide range of online subscription charges (from $1 to $27.50 a month), yet they report surprisingly uniform levels of uptake on subscriptions, typically 1 percent to 3 percent of print circulation -- regardless of price.

Even these survey results may be overly optimistic because, as Nieman Lab observes, "ITZ Publishing consults for Steve Brill’s pay-for-news firm Journalism Online, which just touted the results as an 'API study' without noting its business interest."

The study certainly does not suggest that that small publications can readily benefit from throwing pay walls between Web users and content with which they may already be dissatisfied.

Indeed, another recent survey found that just 5% of online users are willing to pay for content. Whereas "74 per cent of those surveyed said if their favourite news service started charging to access content online they would switch to a free alternative."

For nonprofit publications which actually have special value to their readers, there is a half-step with potential. The Texas Baptist Standard is almost trying it now and has some generalized, high-visibility support. Their E3 product offers enhanced content at a low price, and buried in their marketing points is:

Gratitude: Online news is free to you, but not free to produce. An E3 subscription expresses user-supported gratitude for the value of online news.

Marketing a truly enhanced version of a news product as a way to support the good work is a legitimate strategy. If the product is good enough. Simply put, the for-profit freemium model can probably be fruitfully adapted to nonprofit solicitation strategies.

United Church of Christ news goes full online

Rising costs and declining revenue have driven the 1.2-million-member United Church of Christ to end its newsprint publication in September, replacing it with a portfolio which includes an expanded Web news portal, email publications and a MyUCC social networking community.

The United Church News tied last year for third place in the Associated Church Press competition for best national or international religion newspaper in North America. Distributed for free to UCC members since 2001, it had a reported 2008 circulation of 206,000 and was said to be the nation's largest denominational newspaper.

In a move toward "citizen journalism," registered MyUCC users can create their own blogs and group discussions, upload images and video and otherwise "contribute their own body of unfiltered content, opinions, reflections and creative work," said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, the UCC's director of communications.

The UCC added a weekly an email publication in October to its Web headline service, denominational news page, news blog and podcasts.

Plans are being developed to meet an expressed congregational need for a printed "identity publication" in the Spring of 2010. Guess described it as a twice-yearly, paid-subscription, "oversized, full-color, coffee-table publication of 80-to-100 pages."

Created in 1985 to succeed A.D. Magazine and the United Church Herald, the United Church News published 10 editions per year until 2005. Then, as a result of financial pressure, the number was cut to six.

Another edition is to be printed in June and the final newsprint edition is to be published in September, when it joins the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Witness and other print-on-paper publications whose archive is complete.

Another ecclesiastical newspaper gone

The monthly Wyoming Catholic Register, published since 1952, is following the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Witness into oblivion.

It's a matter of economics. Again. The Register was distributed for free to members of churches in the diocese and had a budget of $233,385 last year. Income from investments fell and other sources of financing were exhausted, according to diocesan officials.

Baptist newspaper closes & death stalks the rest

Which Baptist state newspaper will follow the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Witness into oblivion?

The Utah/Idaho Southern Baptist Convention announced in February that the tabloid-sized paper would end publication. There was mention of looking "at alternative ways to communicate the stories of our churches and associations and state convention," but as of this writing the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Witness has not been replaced with a Web news or other service.

It published 10 issues a year for perhaps 1,300 subscribers: not a viable market. The announcement said, "There have been numerous approaches to try to increase the number of subscriptions and make it cost-effective over the years."

All of those efforts failed, as have the circulation-building efforts of Baptist state publications as a group. The arc of Baptist state association newspaper publication circulation decline is inexorable.

Falling revenue has, as with other recession-plagued religious organizations -- whether ministries, seminaries or nondenominational enterprises -- forced staff and other cutbacks on the ecclesiastical press.

Lacking the heavy marketplace pressure which has driven mainstream publications, the ecclesiastical press has on the whole adapted even less well to the rise of the Web than its for-profit kinfolk. The Christian Science Monitor's shift from print to a Web-based strategy, with a high-quality Web product to support it, is the shining exception.

Among the less well-known, some which were once technological leaders have reversed field to give up, for example, an early adopter advantage in social-networking distribution via twitter. Similarly, the Texas Baptist Standard recently announced an online subscription strategy -- paid access to a visual analog of the print newspaper, with online bells and whistles. Yet online experiments with paid subscriptions have produced no general information winners.

Baptist state convention newspapers in general may have a very limited future. The big Texas Baptist Standard, for example, persuades the average visitor to spend barely enough time on the site (just over a minute and half per visitor) to peruse the index page or perhaps read part of an online story. Repackaging or more heavily promoting content whose Web traffic already demonstrates little marketplace appeal may not be a path to survival, no matter what kind of digital presentation is used.

Church publications going postal over cutbacks

Denominational publications, for decades declining steadily in circulation, depend upon the U.S. Postal Service to get their paper out to subscribers while time-sensitive church announcements still have meaning.

Already a problem-plagued process, writes Karin Hamilton, it is one that will be seriously complicated if the USPS cuts six-day-a-week mail delivery to five.

Certainly accelerating the decline in circulation by publications like The Alabama Baptist, the North Carolina Biblical Recorder, the Dallas-based United Methodist Reporter.

Hamilton writes:

Last fall, the [Alabama Baptist] newspaper was reaching members of Eastside Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., two to three weeks late, said Pastor Mark Smith. Parishioners even approached him about removing their names from the newsletter mailing list to avoid further waste of the church’s resources.

You can't tell from Hamilton's story, but the circulation of subsidized religious publications has closely paralleled that of their dying mainstream media cousins in speed and resistance to reversal.

Their ad revenue has likewise been falling.

Falling revenue has, as with other recession-plagued religious organizations -- whether ministries, seminaries or nondenominational enterprises -- forced staff and other cutbacks on the ecclesiastical press.

Their hope of any kind of Web-driven rebound, even after the current recession, is on the whole worse than for their mainstream cousins.

Lacking heavy marketplace pressure, the ecclesiastical press has on the whole adapted even less well to the rise of the Web than its for-profit kinfolk. The Christian Science Monitor's shift from print to a Web-based strategy, with a high-quality Web product to support it, is the shining exception.

Among the less well-known, some which were once technological leaders have reversed field to give up, for example, an early adopter social-networking system advantage.

Ultimately it is no more USPS changes that will do in denominational publications than it is bloggers that will kill off so much of the mainstream media.

In an era of rapid change, inflexibility will finally kill even the heavily subsidized.

---

Addendum: State Southern Baptist newspapers' circulation in aggregate