Saturday, July 2, 2016 3
THE WINCHESTER STAR — Celebrating 120 Years
Digital by design Star continues to develop newspaper for the future By TOM W. BYRD The Winchester Star
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or 103 years The Winchester Star was available in one format — print. On Aug. 21, 1999, winchesterstar.com was launched and The Star’s digital footprint was established. The front page headline in that Saturday morning edition of The Star read, “Click! Click! Star website takes Winchester to the world.” Those clicks immediately provided readers both inside and outside of the Winchester, Frederick County and Clarke County markets instantaneous access to the area’s news. At the time, 18 years into his role as publisher, Thomas T. Byrd stated, “This vast venture is entered into with caution, excitement, and a keen interest to learn more about this new technological development. A website, from my point of view, is a work in progress. It will have changes in style, content, and focus, as well as daily updates in information for our on-line readers.” Winchesterstar.com launched as a free website and the offerings were rather limited. In the days before smartphones and tablets most readers accessed the site on desktop computers. Some features, such as forums, photo slideshows and reader comments were unique, but most of what was found on the site also appeared in print. In April of 2008 readers got the chance to read exactly what was in The Star, just as it appeared in print, with the launch of The Winchester Star e-edition. This complete digital replica of the printed paper allows the reader to consume the news and flip through the pages on the screen just as in print. A subscription to the e-edition was priced at $5 per month or $60 per year. By March of 2009 The Star had 370 e-edition subscribers. In 2009, as newspaper publishers around the world debated how to integrate these new digital platforms into existing business models, The Star’s publisher made the decision to charge for access to the website. On Aug. 1 of that year The Star became the first paper in Virginia to implement a paywall, charging $2 per month or $24 per year to access content on its website. Three months later, The Star had 771 web-only subscribers and 576 e-edition subscribers. The decision was not without consequences. By August of 2010 visits to the site had dropped by 40 percent and page views by 46 percent. According to research done by the Virginia Press Association in 2010, expectations were that web-based subscriptions would plateau at 5 percent of circulation. At the end of 2010, The Star stood at 7.5 percent with over 1,500 paid digital subscribers. In March of 2011, amidst much fanfare,
Apps for smartphones and tablets make it simple to access and read The Star. The New York Times debuted its paywall for the first time, signaling a major shift within the industry. As of mid-2012, 16 percent of the 1,532 U.S. dailies had some form of a paywall. It has become conventional wisdom that local newspapers like The Star are best positioned to require digital subscriptions. These papers produce local content that cannot be found at national news outlets. Larger circulation papers seem to have also determined that charging for print content, while simultaneously giving away the same content on-line, is not a viable option. A 2016 American Press Institute report showed that, in a sampling of 98 U.S. newspapers with circulation over 50,000, 77 papers have a paywall of some sort. Most sites utilize a metered paywall which permits access to a limited number of articles before payment is required. Only three have a hard paywall restricting all content without payment. They are The Wall Street Journal, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Newsday.
According to the report, the average weekly price of a metered website is $2.97 and the average weekly price of a hard paywall is $4.43. The Star digital offerings can be purchased for as little as $1.25 a week (e-edition) or $0.58 a week (web-only). All Winchester Star print subscribers receive access to all of The Star’s digital offerings. The Star currently charges $6 per month or $65 per year for the e-edition and $3 per month or $30 per year for a web-only subscription. As of June 2016 The Star had 966 e-edition subscribers and 1,214 web-only subscribers representing 12 percent of total paid circulation. Bobby Ford began working at The Star in 1993 and has managed The Star’s digital offerings since 2008. “I always enjoy hearing about a couple where one person will only read the digital version of The Star and another person in the house wants to have the print version of The Star in hand. That’s what we’re serving, people who want the news we provide, but
GINGER PERRY/The Winchester Star
Thomas W. Byrd, assistant general manager of The Winchester Star, displays the paper’s website on his office computer and e-edition digital replica app on a tablet.
July 4, 2016
in different ways,” said Ford. “I like that the digital Star allows us to help people keep a connection to the area. I talk with people all the time who have moved from the area or are traveling, but are able to keep up with what’s going on back home because they read The Star online or on their phone. You can tell when you talk to people just how important that is to them,” Ford said. Naturally, breaking news events tend to drive the most traffic to the site. An average day brings roughly 8,000 “visits” to the site. Coverage of the protests that followed the shooting death of D’Londre Minifield on March 1, 2016, set the all-time daily high for visits with 51,094. The previous high was in July of 2015 during a city police standoff with an armed man that saw 31,080 visits to the site. Ford also manages The Star’s presence on social media. He noted that a two-minute video clip of the March 2016 protests was viewed more than 250,000 times on Facebook. The website works in unison with The Star’s newsroom but can also be quite helpful to other departments in the building. During the record-breaking snow storm that dropped nearly 40 inches of snow on the area in late January of 2016, distribution of the printed paper was challenging to say the least. The Star opened the entire website up to the public free of charge and the community had their news as they weathered the storm. Ford oversaw a redesign of the original site in October of 2011 and has spearheaded the latest redesign, which will be unveiled later this summer. “The digital age gives us the opportunity to be a 24/7 newsroom, where deadlines aren’t based as much on when the paper goes to press, but when the news is ready to go. Changes that we are about to make with our website in the coming months will help us get even closer to being that 24/7 newsroom,” he stated.
July 4, 1896
120 ❏
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To celebrate our 120th anniversary...
20 months for $12000 PLUS! An Extra Bonus Offer! Buy “A View from the Valley” for only $20*! * Book purchase must be made in person in our office. Books will not be held or mailed.
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2 North Kent St., Winchester, VA 22601 (540) 665-4946 • www.winchesterstar.com