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The Voice has launched a campaign to secure a healthy future by asking readers to begin paying for a portion of the costs of operating the newspaper and its popular website, MountainViewOnline.com.
Through a letter to all residents and a print and online advertising campaign, the Voice aims to replace the recession-driven decline in print advertising with membership subscriptions from people who value local journalism, regardless of whether viewed in print or online.
“As more residents turn online to stay informed about the community, and businesses rocked by the recession suspend their advertising or turn to inexpensive marketing alternatives, the traditional business model that allowed local journalism to be primarily supported through advertising is quickly evaporating,” said Voice publisher Tom Gibboney.
“These changes threaten the viability of quality local journalism everywhere, including in our community,” Gibboney explains in an editorial in this week’s paper.
Readers are being asked to sign up for a monthly payment program of at least $5 per month (17 cents a day) by going to www.SupportLocalJournalism.org/MountainView, returning the form they will receive in the mail next week, or by calling the office at 326-8210. Annual payments are also welcomed.
Subscribing members will be sent a Support Local Journalism bumper sticker and a choice of a coffee mug, t-shirt or shopping bag, plus receive special offers and invitations to member events.
“Recent surveys show that our print and online readership is greater than ever,” Gibboney said. “But rather than requiring a newspaper subscription fee or restricting our website to subscribers, we are hoping that Mountain View residents will step up and do their part to fund the quality local journalism that we create day in and day out,” he said.
Good move by the Voice, I say. We need local media, and the Voice’s new model will hopefully allow it to continue well into the future. Recognizing and acting on the realities that face the newspaper industry is commendable, and probably too rare. Thanks for being proactive, MV Voice, I don’t always agree with everything you say, but I’m glad you say it, not to mention giving the public a forum for discussion on the things that effect us all.
Interesting that my last comment was removed. I was merely trying to voice a concern being a long time commercial advertiser that I am sure my rate will not go down, but circulation will certainly go down once this is a pay subscription and will more than likely no longer be a viable advertising tool. I wonder if anyone has thought of the effect of doing this.
Happy to pay $5 per month.
“These changes threaten the viability of quality local journalism everywhere, including in our community”
Are we talking about The Voice???? Maybe if The Voice got serious about balanced reporting on the city, school, police and fire unions, and took a balanced approached to the issue of illegal immigrants in town rather than just gobbling up the party line and liberal take on everything. Until then, the only thing I will miss about The Voice not being around is that the size of the printed paper fits my bird cage perfectly!
As for the rest of you that are so happy to empty out your pocketbooks, you must be the same people that continually vote to have your taxes raised.
“the newspaper and its popular website, MountainViewOnline.com”
I seem to be reading on mv-voice.com. I hadn’t heard of MountainViewOnline.com and went there but it just redirected me to mv-voice.com so I wouldn’t really say that MountainViewOnline.com even exists.
When the Mountain View Voice starts reviewing Mountain View restaurants, businesses, theater and other MV centric topics I will pay for a subscription. 9 times out of 10 the reviews and event listings feature Palo Alto.
how about $25/year? I pay $49 a year for the Merc to be delivered to my doorstep 6 days a week (no Saturday.) Payiong more for the VOice for a weekly paper seems too expensive. But we need our local paper and I would be willing to pay $year. asking for annual payment keeps the billing costs down.
Totally worth it, I’m in. But you should definitely figure out how to offer a Paypal (or similar) option.
Kathy, the reason more Mountain View establishments aren’t reviewed is that it costs MONEY to pay reporters to do this. The Voice shares content with its sister publications, and features businesses in nearby towns that are, in all likelihood, frequented by Mountain View residents!
Ned — you’re a jerk.
Please support the Voice, the community is extremely lucky to have a publication so dedicated to reporting important local issues.
I might support The Voice if it represented journalism but it is nothing but an opinionated mouthpiece for political correctness and progressive propaganda. Most of the content of the paper seems to be the editor’s view of the world and not news.
I am willing to subscribe but $5/ month is too much. $20 to $25 a year is much more realistic.
I agree, the lack of regularity or predictability of content posting in comparison to the Mercury News, $60 a year seems like an awful lot. You might just end up having more people go to the Merc instead…
Count me in for support!
i agree that the $25yr seems more reasonable than $60, especially versus the Merc. I appreciate our local paper and want to do what i can to contribute and keep it running.
For those of us who pick up the voice when we are near a kiosk, willthere be a way to get the Voice mailed to us?
I support this initiative fully and just submitted my $10/month payment. The Voice keeps me up to date on what is happening in the City of Mountain View and lets me join my neighbors in online conversations about it. That is worth a lot to me.
For those of you who don’t like the Voice’s articles or the forums, like Ron, feel free to steer clear of them.
STOP THE OBNOXIOUS POP-UP ADS!! They are even more obnoxious when I try to acess your site on my iPad or iPhone – trying to close the pop-up inevitably results in opening a new browser window. If your goal is to drive traffic AWAY from your site then you have succeeded.
I will be sending a check because I pay for a good product, not for sympathy. I find the articles helpful and the forums a useful tool.
That said, my payment will be less than what residents of Palo Alto pay because they get a superior product. Interested in reviewing some categories of how the two papers managed their newspapers over the past month?
Coverage? – MV Voice loses. The number of stories and reporters for PA always outnumbers MV Voice. Check the “Contact Us” link to see which city the publisher believes is most important by comparing the size of the staff.
News? – first and foremost in PA, not MV. Even stories that are common to all their newspapers get covered first in Palo Alto. For example, when reporting on gas pipeline danger, the PA site was first and with an attractive map drawn in-house at the paper; days later, the MV paper reported the story but with an incomprehensible map.
Restaurant reviews? – MV Voice loses. The site’s name is “shoppaloalto.com”. Look at maps to see how few reviews fall south of San Antonio Road.
Editorial? – MV Voice has occasional material (such as the pithy “Geese” remarks) where the PA paper has reliable solid attention from the publisher.
Sports? – MV coverage is so light it does not get a nav link where the PA paper has several stories that even get filed over the weekend.
Community Pulse? – Not the same care in MV as PA
Real Estate? – Paid ads in MV, true, but hardly compares to an actual section with articles in the PA paper
Arts and Entertainment? – Is this completely absent in the MV paper because there isn’t any?
Electronic edition? – When the paper has a problem, which one gets fixed first?
This imbalance does not happen because of negligent reporters or editors. This is because Embarcadero Media spends its money outside of Mountain View. Obvious from reading the papers, investment is very heavily skewed toward Palo Also, a city whose readers should pay well for such generous coverage.
Yes, I will send money to the paper because I value even the lesser coverage that my city gets. But do not expect readers of a lesser paper to be as generous as readers of the better paper. Find what your friends in Palo Alto have chosen to pay, then send a percentage commensurate with the value you get.
My name is unnamed on this public posting but will not be unnamed on the letter that I send to the publisher.
Will you promise to only hire legal residents and promote immigration reform and not contribute reader money to defend illegal aliens? You do some good and interesting work, but the constant support you give to illegal aliens gets old. The readers also are correct to ask for more local business reviews. If we go to Palo Alto for things, isn’t it possible that they might come to our city as well? I agree that when you check things out it many times feels like we are a second class city as the links take us to information that isn’t Mtn. View oriented. The people in other cities many times get the benefit of this as we leave ours to shop there. We all would benefit from the paper promoting more of our local interests. This would make it worth lots more than 17 cents a day! It might be a good idea to first try to bring in the readers with their ideas in mind while keeping up the campaign to fund the paper. I enjoy the on-line edition, but would pay if it felt more local to our city as I can get other news from other papers.
Do you have a PayPal link so people could donate/pay for “subscription”, even if they, like me, might simply pick up a free copy outside Peet’s Coffee on Castro St every Thursday 9:30am to save delivery to my home?
These posts have been moved from a duplicate thread, which has now been closed:
Using the word journalism and the Mountain View Voice in the same sentence is laughable. If the Voice started printing the news without its liberal slant I might support it. As it stands it is a hodgepodge of mostly (bad) opinion.
by Ron Jun 25, 2011 at 4:51 pm
I support this initiative fully and just submitted my payment. The Voice keeps me up to date on what is happening in the City of Mountain View and lets me join my neighbors in online conversations about it. That is worth a lot to me. For those of you, like Ron, who don’t like the Voice’s articles or the forums, feel free to steer clear of them.
by Martin Omander Jun 27, 2011 at 5:47 pm