An award-winning local news website will close with the loss of five jobs just seven months after being honoured for its coverage.
FLIC Wiltshire received the Website of the Year accolade at July’s EDF Energy South West Media Awards after building an audience of more than 160,000 unique users from scratch.
However the site is now due to close next Monday after its managing director Mark Neilson decided to concentrate on “other business interests.”
Mark cited the “challenge of making online news pay” as the key reason behind the decision.
FLIC, which is short for ‘For Local Independent Coverage’, had more than 164,000 monthly visitors at the time the EDF award was won, but will cease trading on 29 February with the loss of five jobs.
The site was founded four years ago and its peak recorded more than 500,000 hits from more than 250,000 readers.
In an announcement on the website, Mark said: “News provision is a rapidly changing landscape and although the achievements of FLIC and the impressive audience figures prove there is an appetite for local news providers, the media industry’s biggest challenge is making online news pay.
“Rapidly changing technologies require increasing financial and time commitments to ensure that FLIC retained its market leading position and although I’ve previously invested significant amounts, I’ve decided to concentrate this on my other business interests moving forward.
“Unfortunately we have been unable to find a buyer for the site in its entirety so it’s with a deep sense of regret that I have decided to close the business down.
“I’m really proud of my team and their achievements, we’ve all learnt together and grown together during our time at FLIC and I wish them all success in their individual careers. I was lucky enough to work with some really talented people and am sure they will still be as successful in the future.”
Editor Helen Marks added: “After four years of bringing the people of Swindon and Wiltshire the latest breaking, business, sport and community news, FLIC is now bidding a fond farewell.
“FLIC’s audience has peaked at over 500,000 hits to the site from over 250,000 local users and has managed to amass the largest online social media following of any local news outlet. Although the emergence of more local news providers have created a crowded local online news market, FLIC was able to retain its dominant position.”
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“Mark cited the ‘challenge of making online news pay’ as the key reason behind the decision.” And there, folks, is exactly where we’re all at. If anyone has a window-cleaning round to spare please drop me a line at Minim Towers. A tenner for anything viable. Ta.
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People rely on Facebook for their “news” now in a dumbed down social media world, but when the journos are all gone, that’s when we will be missed, when there are a dozen unchallenged Mid Staffs health scandals, a dozen MPs’ expenses scandals, a dozen “dodgy dossier” – when the public has no-one to turn to after being taken to the cleaners by the powers that be, unchecked by reporters looking over their shoulders!
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*dossiers
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It is not closing because it failed to find a buyer, it us folding because it did not pay.
Journalism is not a hobby, it is a business (a fact very few people seem to grasp). If we don’t find a sustainable model of business than this will not be the only one.
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“…challenge of making online news pay”
Proof if any was needed that there is still no formula to make online news sites pay which shouldnt come as any great surprise to 99% of us on here but should be a wake up call for those who have run down print to put all their business eggs in the digital basket. worrying times if youyve nailed your colours to the online mast.
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Indeed, there must be a message here.
Web only site closes because it can’t make money.
And two print giant either buy or launch a print product!
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I up Mr Minim’s bid for a viable window-cleaning round to £15. Look forward to hearing from you. Thanks.
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Do the words headless chickens spring to minds here?
First it was print..
…then prints dead so long live online
…then the penny dropped that no ones making any money out of digital and panic set in …
…so its a quick U turn to backtrack and say print is the new way ahead.
By which time,the print side has been run down,the audience has walked never to return and the “stratgists in suits” are now caught mid stream between the ruins of print and dead in the water online options neither of which are producing sufficient revenues to make them viable.
Oh for the days when the senior managers knew what they were doing and staff had confidence in them.
perhaps when someone knows whats going on and where the future lies theyll agree amongst themselves and let the rest of us know.
To me,to you
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A top award from an energy company? But the public doesn’t trust energy companies and I fear that the mistrust will rub off unfairly on media organisations.
Sadly, if FLIC can’t make a go of it after amassing the largest online social media there is little hope for the lesser fry.
That’s a nice altruistic comment from Onlooker, but today’s cynical public do not see journalists necessarily as Knights in Shining Armour. Businesses run newspapers and businesses are out to make money and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
Many a media campaign has had an ulterior motive, well-hidden under the hype.
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The future lies in ruins, Kenny.
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Investing comment Dick Minim, I started off cleaning windows as a fourteen year old…..
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“People rely on Facebook for their “news” now in a dumbed down social media world”
A bit simplistic Onlooker – I would argue that the position newspapers are in now is because they are being challenged by people sharing multiple news sources – and by posting their own local news – and through websites which do what newspapers used to do (jobs/cars/motors/classifieds), but who have gone on to do it much better.
Say for example I want to get people to a local event, through Facebook I know I have a better chance of targeting the people I want to go there than via a local newspaper or website, and it’s free with no hassle and I am in charge of where I publish it.
In a newspaper it might get pushed down to a few column inches or hidden away in some obscure part of their website (or if your lucky you might get a quick mention on their social media feed)
Plus the advertising on Facebook is discrete, unlike the ads which jump right down your throat as soon as you open a news website.
The problem is that newspaper groups have never adapted to this challenge or way of thinking themselves and they still seem to think that they have a divine right to their traditional audience, when the demographic is rapidly diminishing.
It’s up to newspaper groups to adapt and monetize how people are consuming news online – its not for people to adapt so that newspaper can stay with the same models they’ve always had for decades.
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So, employee x, if digital news doesn’t make money and the money being made from print is declining rapidly, where do we go from here?
This is not about print versus digital. This is about providing something which people want to read and are willing to pay for and, if that doesn’t exist, we should all start looking for new careers now.
The ‘newspaper model’ is still all about being a jack-of-all-trades, covering local news, events, sport, property, cars, jobs, BMDs etc but, the fact is, people don’t buy local newspapers for the news and they NEVER have!
Rightmove, Autotrader and numerous recruitment websites all found their niche years ago and have taken the lion’s share of newspaper revenue away. It’s also easy to see why Facebook is now the platform of choice when it comes to people announcing births, death and marriages.
These successful models are all about niche content and targeted audiences!
Regional publishers bang on about ‘content is king’ and desperately try to fill the void with more and more news stories, pushing for volume in online traffic. But, when a global business like Twitter can’t seem to make volume work for them, why doesn’t anyone start questioning this tactic?
In my view, the only hope is for small operations to ditch the traditional news model and provide quality, niche content to targeted audiences which are willing to pay a premium for it. That’s easier said than done, given what’s left!
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No disrespect to the guys who tried Tomane a go of others but of the best of the bunch in terms of award winning sites has failed to make it viable then surely those ‘in charge ‘ I use the term loosely here,outfit to see this as Kenny says as a big big wake up call and learn from their mistakes.
How many more jobs must be lost, money must be wasted or careers killed before the penny drops that no matter how large or small the operation no one can monetise online news sites to return credible and sustainable revenues.
Those misguided folk who believed the future lies on line please read this piece and inwardly digest, once you have maybe you’ll reconsider planning a career and future in the online news sector.
Digital and obliged the way forward but not for the regional press.
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@dave
I’ve said many times, the regional press print offering is over as a credible 21st century news medium and no one is making money from online news sites, paywalls only work if the content and appeal is such that people will pay to access what’s behind the wall and today’s regional press is so out of touch in a modern news environment that people aren’t accessing it even if free.
Advertisers are attracted to an audience and in print it’s gone and online it’s not attracting them do both are becoming obsolete. I have also said diversity is the route by defining new audiences by specific interest or demographic or by aiming for the quality end / high end readership that’s been sacrificed in the dumbing down of the regionals across the country.
Many new publications catering for the markets that RP has walked away from are thriving and taking business, most staffed by ex regional press people.
And when you say ” …we should all start looking for new careers now” I whole heartedly agree as anyone under 50 thinking there’s a future in traditional regional dailies or weeklies is sadly mistaken, there isn’t and 2016 is already proving this to be the case.
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250,000 UVs, 500,000 PIs = one home page visit and one story per average visitor per month.
There’s no depth in local news audiences, print or online. Whatever the UV figure (and this should be divided by at least three anyway – any of three of these people will use: A phone, tablet, work desktop, work laptop, home computer and/or home laptop, each counting as a UV) in the end what counts are the page impressions. A modest new site should be generating a minimum of 15 million page impressions a month from an audience of 250,000 – that’s 30 stories and 30 home page visits a month (ie one story a day). If that audience read on average three stories a day plus one home page visit, not a huge amount, it should create 30 million page impressions. That might generate some revenue..
Those that say the print industry is destroyed by giving it away online: Look guys, its worse than that. You can’t even give it away for free.
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Mmmmmm. The challenge of making online news pay. No wonder Ashley Highfield is going into newspapers.
After more tan a decade chasing the Internet golden goose, the penny may ave finally dropped.
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“…. the media industry’s biggest challenge is making online news pay”
Maybe the so called big four of the regional press should see this as a free lesson that no matter how much money is thrown at hyping up print to online news sites they cannot sustain an audience so will never attract sufficient advertisers to make them financially viable.
After scaling down the news print side of their businesses and excitedly heralding the new dawn of digital news sites this must surely make them stop,take stock and rethink the whole online chase for new money to replace lost print revenues, if an ‘award winning’ site can’t make a go of it nobody can so I’ll bet there’s a few editors and editorial directors sitting very uncomfortably after this latest set back to them naively going full steam ahead with with digital news sites at the cost of print.
The question is having watched the print side implode and now huge checks appearing in digital sites, where to next?’
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Its a wake up call and a real watershed
When print started to lose its appeal drop readers and lose revenue at least there was an alterrnate option;digital online news sites,now that door is rapidly cloing its hard to see where the next direction will be.
i recall a senior commercial manager telling the sales people that they had better get “on board the online bus” as in a few years time there would be no newspapers due to rising costs and falling revenues so the future was online and anyone not able to adapt would find themselves left behind.
This not only attracted the typical yes man mentality of those jumping on the latest bandwagon and preaching digital(even if the customer didnt want it or couldnt understand it) and also convinced some really good sales guys to leave as this was not their thing.
The immediate result was print money “converted ” to online thus falsely boosting the figures and poplualrity of digital and a running down of the paper side of the revenues due to the above practice and with most of the good sales people leaveing.
With the shortsighted theory being that theres more profit in an online site as there are few costs and certainly no newsprint,staff,production and deliovery costs today we are left with both sides of the business in ruins with print in decline and not viable and digital dead and buried before its begun.
With both revenue streams gone the situation in fanancial terms alone has become critical and i for one cant see where the next source of revenue to sustain the basic costs of running some of trhese businesses will come from.
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Kay: good analysis but there won’t be a new source of revenue and businesses will close. It’s as brutal and Darwinian as that, I’m afraid.
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…. which makes this all the more interesting.
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2016/news/hyperlocal-publisher-reveals-plan-to-expand-beyond-city-it-serves/
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http://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk
Founded June 1998
Accredited Living Wage Employer
Still here and still making a (modest) profit
Our latest attempt to diversify our revenue stream, launched last year:
http://www.gigabuy.co.uk
Please tell your friends about it and encourage retailers to join.
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Excellent assessment @kay and I agree,there is no third way while the same people who drove the ship onto the rocks remain in charge.
Too many yes men and women only interested in self preservation and unsure of the ability to get a job elsewhere have taken the industry down to depths from which it
cannot recover. We all know of the complere lack of investment, sacrificing good quality staff for cheap alternatives and dumbing down the content to levels of little interest to the potential reader and at a time when new and advanced ways to access news were emerging alongside a complete arrogance and complacency by the editors and men in suits that people would always buy the local paper who are being proven frighteningly wrong.
Until new business minded people come back into the industry and develop unique products that serve a specific market or category the industry will carry on in free fall until nothing remains. Bleak but sadly true, to believe things will suddenly change and go neck to how they were is naive.
Ps
Knowing many ex regional press colleagues including some of the top business minded commercial people since left the industry myself there’s no likelihood of any returning.
As one said recently, they’ve made their bed, best let them lay on it
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Mark February 2016 in your diary. The dawn of realisation that you cannot build a company on local web news. My local JP rag (once a fine paper) dived from 22,000 a week newspaper sales to about 5,000 under the deliberate journocide policy of JP to make way for the brilliant new age of digital.
They have no chance of getting that sales level back. So what’s left?
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This site closing is not a great example for doom and gloom.
450k pageviews, claims of 5 million facebook reach (!) and just 4500 twitter followers …. and perhaps most damming the facebook engagement is near sod all. Everywhere seems to be ‘award winning’, but it appears the readers are not that engaged?
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