{"id":745530,"date":"2013-04-08T22:15:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-09T02:15:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=227345"},"modified":"2013-04-08T22:15:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-09T02:15:11","slug":"digital-first-medias-john-paton-on-newspapers-and-paywalls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/745530","title":{"rendered":"Digital First Media\u2019s John Paton on newspapers and paywalls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A company with the name Digital First Media has a reputation to uphold when it comes to thinking about the future of publishing, and CEO John Paton <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/digital-first-media\/ci_22964684\/q-digital-first-medias-john-paton-bankruptcy-cash\">didn&#8217;t disappoint in a recent interview<\/a> with a reporter for one of his chain&#8217;s newspapers. Among other things, he talked about paywalls, and also about where he plans to take the company in the future. Here are a few excerpts:<\/p> <ul> <li><strong>On paywalls<\/strong>: &#8220;I don&#8217;t think paywalls are the answer to anything. If we&#8217;re swapping out print dollars for digital dimes, I think paywalls are a stack of pennies. We might use the pennies in transition to get where we&#8217;re going.&#8221;<\/li> <li><strong>On the future of print<\/strong>: &#8220;Newspapers in print are clearly going away. I think you&#8217;re an idiot if you think that&#8217;s not happening. I don&#8217;t think that news organizations are dying but are newspapers going to stop running in print? Yeah. Absolutely.&#8221;<\/li> <li><strong>On print vs. digital<\/strong>: &#8220;We have $1.3 billion in revenue. And of $1.3 billion, $900 million is advertising and $165 million of the advertising is digital advertising. That $165 [million] is going to have to more than double in three years. To do that, we&#8217;re going to have to take some risks on the print side. That&#8217;s the one thing that scares the [expletive] out of everybody.&#8221;<\/li> <li><strong>On newspapers<\/strong>: &#8220;I love newspapers. I&#8217;m a newspaperman. My father was a printer. I started off as a copyboy. I love newspapers. But they don&#8217;t love me anymore.&#8221;<\/li> <\/ul> <p>Paton also talked about the bankruptcy of one of Digital First Media&#8217;s subsidiaries, the Journal-Register Co., which <a href=\"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/2012\/09\/06\/newspaper-restructuring-think-steel-cars-and-airlines\/\">filed for court protection last year<\/a> for the second time &#8212; driven by what DFM said were massive commitments related to pensions and other costs taken on when the newspaper industry was better off financially. A group of funds managed by Digital First&#8217;s financial backer Alden Global eventually bought the company&#8217;s assets back. Said Paton:<\/p> <blockquote id=\"quote-the-process-allowed-\"><p>&#8220;The process allowed the company to shed a bunch of legacy obligations it could never afford that it incurred when it was a much bigger company. The Journal Register incurred most of its long-term debt, most of its pension obligations, most of its lease obligations when it was nearly twice the size the company that it is today, which is kind of what&#8217;s happening to newspaper companies.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote> <br \/> <img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/stats.wordpress.com\/b.gif?resize=1%2C1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" \/><p><a href=\"http:\/\/pubads.g.doubleclick.net\/gampad\/jump?iu=\/1008864\/GigaOM_RSS_300x250&#038;sz=300x250&%23038;c=395579\"><img src=\"http:\/\/pubads.g.doubleclick.net\/gampad\/ad?iu=\/1008864\/GigaOM_RSS_300x250&#038;sz=300x250&%23038;c=395579\" \/><\/a><\/p><p><strong>Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:<\/strong><br \/>Subscriber content. <a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/?utm_source=media&utm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=628966+digital-first-medias-john-paton-on-newspapers-and-paywalls&utm_content=mathewingram\">Sign up for a free trial<\/a>.<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/2011\/01\/how-media-companies-can-compete-online\/?utm_source=media&utm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=628966+digital-first-medias-john-paton-on-newspapers-and-paywalls&utm_content=mathewingram\">How Media Companies Can Compete Online<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/2011\/08\/building-a-better-paywall-strategies-for-monetizing-news-content\/?utm_source=media&utm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=628966+digital-first-medias-john-paton-on-newspapers-and-paywalls&utm_content=mathewingram\">Building a better paywall: strategies for monetizing news content<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/pro.gigaom.com\/2011\/04\/newnet-q1-content-farms-and-niche-networks-on-the-rise\/?utm_source=media&utm_medium=editorial&utm_campaign=auto3&utm_term=628966+digital-first-medias-john-paton-on-newspapers-and-paywalls&utm_content=mathewingram\">NewNet Q1: Content Farms and Niche Networks on the Rise<\/a><\/li><\/ul><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gigaom.feedsportal.com\/c\/34996\/f\/646446\/s\/2a7d1859\/mf.gif?resize=1%2C1\" border='0'\/><div class='mf-viral'><table border='0'><tr><td valign='middle'><a href=\"http:\/\/share.feedsportal.com\/share\/twitter\/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaidcontent.org%2F2013%2F04%2F08%2Fdigital-first-medias-john-paton-on-newspapers-and-paywalls%2F&t=Digital+First+Media%E2%80%99s+John+Paton+on+newspapers+and+paywalls\" ><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/res3.feedsportal.com\/social\/twitter.png?w=780\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/share.feedsportal.com\/share\/facebook\/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpaidcontent.org%2F2013%2F04%2F08%2Fdigital-first-medias-john-paton-on-newspapers-and-paywalls%2F&t=Digital+First+Media%E2%80%99s+John+Paton+on+newspapers+and+paywalls\" ><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/res3.feedsportal.com\/social\/facebook.png?w=780\" border=\"0\" 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Among other things, he talked about paywalls, and also about where he plans [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-37WG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745530\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}