The new LatinTrade.com
Some of you may have already noticed that there is a new Web site. It's in what they call "soft launch" mode while we work out language and technical details, but this is the replacement site.
Lots of interesting new features for our plan going forward, but the most salient aspect for correspondents is likely the fact that you cannot see the content anymore without a $79.95 annual subscription.
Don't panic.
I have sent our correspondents list to circulation to create comp accounts for our regular writers. Give me a week or so to get this to you. If in a couple of weeks you do not get a password from me or from our circ dept, please let me know and I'll get it sorted out for you.
In short, there's no more free Latin Trade online. You can register for our new e-mail newsletters at no cost, but the actual Web content will no longer be free. It's a quirk of the media business: If you are a Condé Nast or Time Warner title with 3 million subs, you can give away anything you want and make it back on ad rates (usually, maybe, no guarantees). If you're us, at 85K paid, you have to charge, and that includes the Web.
In the end, you lose no serious readers ($109 is nothing to our target, the C-level exec dealing with Latin America) and you gain more data on who is reading what, how and why. That you can take back to advertisers, along with circulation audits and such, and it bolsters your case on the selling side.
That's the theory, anyway. All media -- even TV and Hollywood -- is going through a similar flux as readers segment into tiny little patches of special interest, Tivo and iPods allow people to "time shift" their information and the newshole, what is we do, gets smaller and more pointed as a result. If that means better information to the readers that want it, everyone wins. But it does imply change at the technological and the journalistic levels, and we're going through it like any other outlet.
Lots of interesting new features for our plan going forward, but the most salient aspect for correspondents is likely the fact that you cannot see the content anymore without a $79.95 annual subscription.
Don't panic.
I have sent our correspondents list to circulation to create comp accounts for our regular writers. Give me a week or so to get this to you. If in a couple of weeks you do not get a password from me or from our circ dept, please let me know and I'll get it sorted out for you.
In short, there's no more free Latin Trade online. You can register for our new e-mail newsletters at no cost, but the actual Web content will no longer be free. It's a quirk of the media business: If you are a Condé Nast or Time Warner title with 3 million subs, you can give away anything you want and make it back on ad rates (usually, maybe, no guarantees). If you're us, at 85K paid, you have to charge, and that includes the Web.
In the end, you lose no serious readers ($109 is nothing to our target, the C-level exec dealing with Latin America) and you gain more data on who is reading what, how and why. That you can take back to advertisers, along with circulation audits and such, and it bolsters your case on the selling side.
That's the theory, anyway. All media -- even TV and Hollywood -- is going through a similar flux as readers segment into tiny little patches of special interest, Tivo and iPods allow people to "time shift" their information and the newshole, what is we do, gets smaller and more pointed as a result. If that means better information to the readers that want it, everyone wins. But it does imply change at the technological and the journalistic levels, and we're going through it like any other outlet.
posted by Greg Brown at 8:50 AM
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