The Nashua Telegraph has been bleeding like most daily papers in the country. A problem that the current “crisis” (loss of ad revenue) has only accelerated. To keep itself alive and breathing the “paper” announced that it will end all print editions except Sunday effective immediately.
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I’m intrigued by the change.
It means we’ll get a more realistic picture of the Telegraph’s online reach as all of their readers are forced online or, as I’ve seen in a few places to other portals. Some folks won’t take the leap to digital. Others will balk at the print subscription pricing for a cloud-product with no print copy. But we should see their Alexa rank improve some within the next few months.
Will they catch up to GraniteGrok?
We passed them back in 2018. Our only digital competition among print news in the Granite State has been the Union Leader. We’ve been ahead of them from time to time and they’ve been ahead of us as well. But a mostly-digital footprint from the Telegraph changes the dynamic or it should.
People have to go online to get their product. Will it make any difference?
I guess we’ll see.
The Telegraph should save a small fortune on printing costs (they used someone else’s press), which is money they can use to pay reporters – of whom they have very few at this point. That should keep them running for a bit longer, but will the subscribers demand cheaper subscriptions and what does that mean for their bottom line?
I can’t speak to that. We run on donations and some ad revenue to pay the server and equipment fees, and for webby experts to tweak the site or kick it in the backside as needed. Our writers are all volunteers.
The upside is no payroll. The downside is you can’t tell them to work a certain story or meet a deadline. It’s a tradeoff but it works for us.
I wish the Telegraph luck. And I hope they added money in their budget to pay for more drive space, bandwidth, and all that. When your traffic goes up digital equipment and operating costs go with it. And no one wants to pay for a digital subscription if the site crashes now and again.
