Cracking the online code

There's no questioning the vital role of online in the world of media these days, highlighted by major deals from the News Corporation and its Fox Interactive Network, home to MySpace, MySpace China and a vast network of news websites.

The battle to attract more readers, and just as importantly advertisers, to the online space is playing havoc with senior managers of major news groups.

Should news online be free or should readers pay a premium for online content? And just how should the internet compliment the print product? Big questions no doubt. But the online space is moving fast and so are a host of the regions biggest publishers.

Since relaunching its Time.com portal in December 2006, the Time Warner group has focused heavily on building up its online capabilities. The company has added a swag of online services including streaming video in partnership with fellow Time Warner company CNN, a Time hub page on iTunes with weekly entertainment podcasts, an aggregated global business section powered by Google as well as China blog sites, which during the Olympics could prove to be a good move.

This strategy reached its crescendo in December last year when Time.com recorded 101 million page views, an all time record and 73% higher than its 2006 numbers.

Josh Tyrangiel has been managing editor Time.com since September 2006, taking over the sight at a time when readers hunger for online news was, to put it mildly, taking off.

"We've had varying degrees of web strategies over the years, but we needed to get in and get online in a serious way," Tyrangiel says.

"If you can save people time and inform them, it's a good recipe to have. We need traffic, it's all about numbers in this game, but getting people is still a challenge," he adds.

One year on from the relaunch and Tyrangiel says the site is getting better but the pace of change, he says, is daunting.

"It is competitive and my competitors are everybody. There is one way to solve it though and that is to be very, very good."

Around the region, The Financial Times is another major media group making big inroads online, but in a very different way.

Unlike Time.com, the FT.com has a subscriber model and charges readers for its business content.

But more recently the site has been slowly opening up its content. In October last year The Financial Times struck a partnership with Google and 30 other partner websites to launch a ‘First Click Free' program that will allow users to click through to FT.com content free of charge, without registration or subscription. The news group also beefed up its blogging community in a bid to draw and retain more visitors to its site and launched a video partnership with Reuters.

Greg Zorthian, global circulation director at The Financial Times, says the growth of online has been a hugely complimentary service to its print product, increasing its offline subscriber base and drawing in new readers.

Zorthian argues that the growth of online is not in any way contributing to the decline of print.

"It's not about the future of print, but the future of content," he says. "We don't feel the decline of print, The Financial Times, long term, is platform agnostic. We want to deliver our product on every platform we can. It's not wedded to any one medium."

Zorthian says there is currently no decision to make its online content free, despite the rumours that it's competitor The Wall Street Journal, is considering opening its content, but he did not rule it out.

"We've talked about it, we need to do what is right for The Financial Times. We can't worry about what The Wall Street Journal is doing. If one did it, would everyone be forced to do it? No. It's always important to value your content."