Part of the news media’s job is to make information from people in high places more accessible to the masses. Now one newspaper has decided to restrict access to its own content, and it hopes to make some money by doing so.
The Sacramento Bee, which is owned by the McClatchy Company, announced on Wednesday that it was introducing a new Web site focused on California government and state politics. Membership to The Bee’s Capitol Alert costs $499 a year, although lower rates are available for offices or organizations that buy several memberships at once.
In addition to the extra content that is now a fixture of paid-registration newspaper Web sites (exclusive blogs, expanded columns, e-mail updates), Capitol Alert will also allow subscribers to enjoy early access to some articles scheduled to appear in the next day’s paper. Most of the paper’s articles are currently uploaded to the Bee’s Web site around midnight; Capitol Alert will have articles and editorials focusing on politics available at 8 p.m. the night before.
Many newspapers, including The New York Times, have placed at least some of their content behind paid-registration walls, in attempts to generate more online revenue as print subscribers decline. (Registration to The Bee’s main Web site, sacbee.com, will remain free.)
According to Joyce Terhaar, The Bee’s managing editor, the Capitol Alert content is intended for a niche audience, such as lobbyists or political insiders. She added that breaking news would still be posted on the paper’s main Web site during the day.
“We’re looking at three different publishing platforms and making news judgments,” Ms. Terhaar said, adding that Capitol Alert will provide content that would not be “of broad interest” to the main Web site’s readers or that would not necessarily make it into the paper. “We’re also practicing, so we could kind of figure out through the course of the day what’s niche” and what should go into the paper.
Ms. Terhaar said that the paper has not yet received any complaints or criticism about the early access to the articles. And Kelly McBride, the ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, a journalism organization, said that she did not see any ethical problem with The Bee’s venture.
“Essentially what they’re doing is giving people an added bonus rather than penalizing the public,” she said, comparing The Bee’s two levels of news access to the difference between first class and coach seats on airplanes. “I’m not going to be critical of them, because we’re in a point in time where newspapers will have to be creative and innovative with how they’re going to use their online content to generate revenue.”
