Blog

Newspaper group will stop ’shovelling’

MediaNews Group plans to reduce the amount of content from its 54 daily newspapers that it makes available for free on the papers’ websites.

The move was announced Wednesday and reported today on sltrib.com, a MediaNews website, which quoted company president Jody Lodovic:

“The strategy is about creating a different audience online and not about shoveling that day’s [newspaper] content online for free. It’s about creating options for people getting their news in different ways.”

The Tribune said no launch date or pricing had been announced.

…Lodovic painted a picture that he likened to how telephone and cable television companies “bundle” their services into packages with different levels of access. Bundles could be structured in numerous ways — newspaper delivery three days a week and electronic delivery during the rest of the week; combining print and electronic editions with access to a paper’s archives; free Web sites that summarize daily news, while referring readers to the print product or another Web site, where fees might be collected to gain access to deeper information; sites aimed at target audiences, such as young readers, pet lovers or parents.