AJC's website redesign, digital paywall frustrates some readers, staffers
We needed to have a site that didn't look like it was built in 1995,' says AJC exec
- http://clatl.com/atlanta/ImageArchives?by=1223504
- Here's what the new AJC.com looks like...
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been retooling its digital strategy for much of the last two years. During that time, management’s efforts have included no longer holding articles exclusively for print readers and launching MyAJC.com, the premium site that’s home to much of the paper’s in-depth beat reporting and investigative stories. The paper's leadership last week unveiled a redesigned AJC.com that a few readers liked. But the site found plenty of critics who called its new look, among other things, "unreadable" and "unusable."
It's the latest change in the newspaper's ongoing effort to both improve reader experience and increase online revenue. The AJC's Vice President of Audience Mark Medici says his team received nearly 1,000 comments about the new AJC.com — plenty of bad ones, but also some positive remarks — in the first 24 hours following the launch. But the massive AJC.com overhaul, he tells CL, was long overdue to meet the needs of the free site's readership.
"The audiences are so different for what a print reader wants, what a digital consumer willing to pay for credible journalism wants, and what a free audience wants," Medici says. "The free audience is top of the funnel for us. It’s what we all compete for. ... We didn’t have a site that allowed us to compete. As social media referrals become more important from Facebook and Twitter, we needed to have a site that didn’t look like it was built in 1995."
Medici expects the new website's visual focus to keep AJC.com readers more engaged with the site's content. The AJC's digital team also plans to frequently update the homepage to maximize the amount of content seen by visitors. He says there's been some positive feedback regarding its embedded galleries, community page designs, and story templates. But AJC.com visitors have also blasted certain problems including the excessive amount of images replacing headlines, a horrendous commenting experience, and poor navigation from its homepage to its blogs.
The feedback is roughly in line with what Medici expected. He says the AJC's digital team will incrementally make improvements each week rather than make all the changes at once in one large overhaul. Those small upgrades started last weekend — they've already fixed the blog navigation problem — and will continue to take place through late 2014 and possibly early 2015.
However, the AJC's digital push to expand online readership while boosting cash through its paywall has frustrated staffers. Some employees, acknowledging the need for a revamped online strategy, tell CL they remain puzzled at the decision to fracture the AJC's brand in a way that has buried its strongest stories behind a paywall on a new website unfamiliar to many readers.
"It's visually very different with the emphasis on photos and visuals being more important for AJC.com," one staffer says. "For writers, it means fewer positions for news stories that are prominent. There's been a judgement made that valued content goes behind the MyAJC.com paywall — good work should have a price on it. That's a reasonable assumption. But that means the vast majority of people going to AJC.com don't see the best work."
The AJC.com, which averages millions of visitors each day, has increasingly become filled with paid sponsored content and photo galleries of celebrity mansions. MyAJC.com stories — which can be seen if shared on Facebook or Twitter — have received substantially less traffic. As a result of the AJC's digital strategy, some staffers describe a growing disconnect between the work they're writing for a smaller audience behind the paywall and what's published for the free site.
"It feels like nothing we do on MyAJC.com on a day when Julio Jones' house is being featured in an AJC.com photo gallery will matter," one employee says. "Everything's behind the damn paywall. ... It's harder and harder to find our stuff on the free site."
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One staffer, comparing the two websites as "Doritos" to "Spinach," says "I barely look at AJC.com because my content is on MyAJC.com." Likewise, the decision by AJC publishers to limit access to higher in-depth stories has unnecessarily forced readers to choose between free clickbait or subscription-based watchdog reporting.
"It's a double-edged sword," one staffer says. "There's a hope people will get so frustrated that they'll go to the MyAJC.com."
Staffers note that the current digital strategy remains a vast improvement from the dark days where some articles were only published in print instead of online. Yet recent changes haven't stopped calls to scrap MyAJC.com’s hard paywall for a metered paywall — or the removal of a paywall altogether — that allows in-depth reporting to have a greater reach online.
Medici, who’s “thrilled” with the initial success of MyAJC.com, says the current price of $3.46 per week — only $3.39 per week for digital access AND the Sunday print paper, oddly enough — was the right decision during the premium’s site launch phase. He quickly notes that MyAJC.com offers one of the most affordable premium digital subscriptions among major U.S. metro daily newspapers.
He says the AJC’s digital team has been constantly "pivoting" in search of the best strategy. That will continue moving forward as management looks at other alternatives including a metered paywall or even a “bank,” where readers can deposit cash that will be deducted for each viewed article. MyAJC.com's current model may not last forever, he says, but it's unlikely that a premium model of some kind will go away for good.
“We’re exploring all different options for MyAJC.com,” Medici says. “Newsrooms are not inexpensive. We want to continue to have a robust newsroom. We have to do that through some type of payment model.”