Now this is more like it. The leaking has returned to its FrontBurner-friendly path.
A couple days ago, Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab published a Q&A that quoted Moroney as saying the pay wall move was “a big risk.” Now, in a memo to staff this morning, Moroney says he doesn’t recall saying that:
Big risk? I recall saying it was a risk. And a smart risk. A big risk? Maybe I did say it, but I don’t recall it.
Is it a big risk to our enterprise? No. It’s simply not. In fact, I believe the upside is far greater than the downside. As I do recall saying, this move we are making to ask consumers to pay for the content we distribute digitally isn’t a “the world is flat or it’s round” proposition where getting it wrong means sailing over the edge never to return.
I did say that you can always go back to free. Because you can. Yet that’s not what we are planning to do. We are planning on making this strategy work. As I said in a note to you last Tuesday, strategies need time to work. We are going to give this strategy lots of time and lots of support.
Is it a “big risk” relative to the experience some publishers have had when they have asked their customers to pay for access to the content they distribute digitally? Sure. There aren’t that many examples of companies that have made this work. Frankly, there aren’t that many companies that have tried to make this work. We have developed this strategy carefully and many of you have put in countless hours to give us the best chance we can have to make it successful. I feel very good about our prospects.
The single most important thing that gives us the best chance to be successful is our track record of 125 years of publishing news and information that is relevant and important to people who live in the communities we serve. No local media organization, nor combination of local media organizations, can match the breadth and depth of local, regional and state reporting that we do. And we do it daily. This is how the consumer benefits from us having one of the largest local media newsrooms in the country.
Here is just one way we put the scale of our news resources to work: The story on the state budget on page one yesterday. There may be no more important story for people living in Texas in 2011 than how our legislature deals with a deficit that could reach $25 billion. I can guarantee you this: no media organization in this state will cover this story as well or as deeply or with the kind of sophistication that we will. That’s just one example of reporting worth paying for.
As I said a week ago, the only failure in times like these is the failure not to take risks. Big ones and small ones. I am glad we have a culture that wants to take risks because it knows that only through taking risks will we move forward.
Jim Moroney
Publisher & CEO
The Dallas Morning News
