Mi-Ai Parrish
Kansas City Star Publisher Mi-Ai Parrish announced today that the McClatchy-owned newspaper is rolling out its new “Star +” program to subscribers.
Even the Star’s publisher does not seem to know what to call the confusing program.
While it is difficult to determine what the new rates will be for new or existing customers, the Star did show that a Digital-only subscription for one year will be $109.45. The phone lines at the Star have been overwhelmed with questions.
Kansas City PR icon Pat Paton says Star subscribers will now pay an additional 69 cents per week for the combined paper and digital product. An all digital copy with no paper is $9.95 a month.
“Did you see the Star’s front page wrap today explaining their new on-line package?” asked one subscriber, who ironically, is a retired Star employee.
“I’m am still totally confused about it and don’t know if I am going to be charged any additional costs for being a print subscriber.”
Here is Parrish’s note:
It has a few different names: The metered system, the all-platform-access program, a digital subscription, or a paywall.
Beginning Dec. 5, The Kansas City Star will join hundreds of other news operations in moving to whatever it is you’d like to call it. Essentially, we’re going to charge a little bit for people to get our content, but you’ll be able to access it in a multitude of ways.
The Star is adding all of our digital subscription products for our home delivery subscribers so that you will be able to enjoy one inclusive print and digital “Star+” subscription package.
Now, I understand that being charged for something that has been free isn’t fun. But we are much more than paper and a homepage. Providing unlimited access across all platforms for a small amount makes good sense.
This all-access way of packaging our content addresses the new ways people come to us, and provides incredible flexibility for our readers.
Readers will have unlimited access to our suite of digital products, including kansascity.com, e-Star replica edition, mobile sites, digital back-issues and archive databases. This provides subscribers with access on smart phones, tablets, PCs and more. With e-Star – our digital replica of The Star’s print edition — articles, photographs, even in-paper ads and crossword puzzles, can be emailed, printed and saved.
We hope you’ll recognize that it is a logical strategy to enable us to provide quality local news and information in the increasingly myriad ways people reach us.
We are glad more people than ever read The Kansas City Star, as technology continues to enable us to reach more people in more ways. Thank you for reading and for helping us continue to serve and grow in this community, as we have for more than 131 years.
Mi-Ai Parrish
MILLIONS OF SITES WITH CONTENT
Now no one will really read the Star. RIP Kansas City Star. No one is going to pay $109.45 a year to read the Star when there are a million of websites out there offering the same content.
Maybe they should make their website halfway decent before charging for it.
ON THE FENCE
I didn’t go that deep, but I saw nothing on the digital version mentioning that today was the day. I’m still on the fence about subscribing. It’s all about content not about a smaller staff doing their best.
FOR THE RECORD
Just for the record, The Star is now 132 years old and counting, not 131 (the figure mentioned in Mi-Ai’s statement). Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the Star Plus project is received by both existing subscribers and potential subscribers. The trick will be to make the print version of the paper newsworthy enough to appeal to those who have little or no interest in accessing the online content, even if the charge is minimal, while “keeping at least some powder dry” for the benefit of the paper’s online subscribers. I have a few ideas that I believe to be worthy of consideration, but I’m certainly not going to hold my breath waiting for someone down at 18th & Grand to give me a call.
PAYWALLS NOT INNOVATIVE
Worst mistake you could have made. PayWalls are not innovative, they’re a band-aid and a cop-out.
Print advertisers pay to produce the paper, along with all it’s overhead and salaries. Circulation revenue doesn’t even cover newspaper distribution costs. Case in point…the goofy wannabe salesman at Walgreen’s hawking $30 subscriptions.
With your active print advertiser count dwindling (and those that are left you’ve bled dry with useless special sections that don’t add value to their business) I’m not sure why you’d do this to your digital advertisers, who need to account for at least 40% of your total advertising revenue. And Classified Ventures products shouldn’t count, but I’m sure they do so the Electronic Revenue top line looks good.
I bet your digital advertisers are thrilled with this decision. There will be less impressions to buy, and you’ll spin them as more valuable because of their are less of them. You’ll take advantage of the ignorant advertising prospects in your funnel and sell impressions at a higher CPM to client’s who don’t know that a $25CPM is overpriced, thus making more with less.
Not sure if this is genius or an epic fail. Either way, I think it’s pretty crummy. Find other ways to “Earn” revenue, other than the same way you did 100 years ago in the time of James M. Cox and Joseph Pulitzer.
BOTH GOING DOWN
………..”NYT IS A BETTER PAPER, BETTER DEAL
New York Times, a better paper, “…….
Gene-the NYT/Star is same same and both going down. Serves em right. We quit the Star about 5yrs ago and havent missed it since.
Most all big newspapers quit reporting news years ago with WAPO/NYT leading the way.
NYT IS A BETTER PAPER, BETTER DEAL
New York Times, a better paper, offers a more economical deal to its readers. I wrote at The Star for 25 yrs. What’s left is sad.
STAR NEEDS PR HELP
We called to switch from paper to digital-only. The Star said the only way to do that is to cancel and then wait a day or two before re-subscribing as a digital-only subscriber. Yesterday was to be my last day on paper. Today the paper arrived and the website is wide open?? The Star called to see why I cancelled. I told them it was at their direction to which the lady said OK and hung up. John, they need PR help.
Totally agree. From a business standpoint the KC Star might be the most non-customer-focused business I have ever experienced.
KC STAR GET IT TOGETHER
$109.45?! Christ, KC Star, get it together.
Christ?
CHRISTMAS PARTIES
More layoffs at The Star today. Those manager Christmas parties are pretty expensive.
http://i.imgur.com/kF9LL.jpg
SOCKS OLDER THAN PUBLISHER
It hasn’t been that long ago when the KC Times was a great newspaper. The Star was the little local afternoon paper. The newspapers have steadily deteriorated down to the level of the illiterate. And who is this publisher? I have socks older than her, and her grammer is atrocious! This is ridiculous. Face it. McClatchy is NOT in the newspaper business. They have some other, unknown, agenda. Period.
HIT THE KC STAR ‘WALL’
Well, I hit the “wall”. I visited kcstar.com today and clicked to read Dear Abby. I know, dumb but I like reading about other goofballs of this world.
Anyway, I was presented with the following:
“WELCOME MEMBERS!
Thank you for visiting the Kansas City Star. To access this article, please sign in with your Press+ Account below.”
I think it’s funny that The Star would require me to pay for Dear Abby when her content is free at http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/
I believe my days of visiting kcstar.com are over.
-sgtpepe
ADIOS
Adios KC Star!
THOUGHTS ON KC STAR PAYWALL
It’s only a matter of time before we see this appear when you type of go to your bookmark of KC Star.
“We apologize but due to the lack of subscribers,/readers the Kansas City Star has had to close their doors forever. The launching of the ‘paywall’ (pay to read articles) was not as financially profitable as expected therefore we had no choice but to discontinue production and/or services of the entire KC Star organization, putting thousands out of work.”
So sad.
PRICE TOO HIGH
$110? For digital content? I like being able to read the star, but I’d cap out at $20/yr. I guess my local paper reading days are over (until the star changes its mind on this here in a couple of months).
BYPASS PAYWALL
Just use the private browsing function of your browser. It bypasses the paywall. LOL.
NOT ALLOWED TO CHOOSE SERVICES
I had been reading USA Today while traveling, Sunday NYT and the Star home when I was home. USA Today has a great app which I really like but went back to the Star daily once they got their awesome iPad app. I dropped the NYT when they bundled and dropped the Star when did the same. They have such a hard time getting and keeping subscribers you’d think the’d let me choose what services I want. I mean really, who the hell reads a newspaper on a computer? Especially if they already have an iPad. Genius.
STAR DIGITAL A MINUS
Star+ is a big minus…I guess I wont be getting my news from them anymore. I think they are going to have difficulty…the St. Joseph News Press did the same thing years ago, and they learned…and now are not charging for digital content any longer. This too will pass, or KC Star will pass…wait and see.