McClatchy CEO Pruitt sees free as the reigning business model for online news
By APWednesday, January 27, 2010
On the Call: McClatchy CEO on charging Web readers
NEW YORK — McClatchy’s fourth-quarter earnings offered a snapshot of the troubles facing newspapers on the Web. The publisher’s online advertising revenue was up a promising 14.9 percent over the prior-year quarter and totaled $188 million in 2009. But overall ad revenue dropped $426 million from the year before.
During a conference call with analysts on Wednesday, McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt was asked about the possibility of charging readers for online news, rather than rely solely on ads. The New York Times said last week that it will start charging for full access to its site in 2011.
QUESTION: I was wondering if you guys have thought about putting on a pay model for your Web sites similar to that of The New York Times.
ANSWER: As far as a paid model for our web sites, I guess I would say we’re not ideological about this. We are willing to experiment and try various models. We tend to believe that the overwhelming majority model on the Internet will be a free ad supported model. And in fact that has proven to be profitable for us with nearly $200 million in ad revenue from the Internet at a higher profit rate than our print model.
