In 1996, "American Education’s Newspaper of Record" entered the Internet age when it launched its Web site, edweek.org. While not at the absolute cutting edge, Education Week’s site was, nonetheless, among the first journalistic offerings on the Web.
The site – published by the nonprofit Editorial Projects in Education – quickly became a resource for policymakers, school administrators, teachers, parents, advocates, education journalists, and researchers.
For the first few years after its launch, we took great pride in edweek.org just as it was. Administrators and teachers told us it was great. Reporters from other media outlets called it an invaluable resource for ferreting out the facts about schools and learning. Researchers, policymakers, and advocates viewed it as a collection point for data and an online crossroads for lively discussions and debates.
There was bad news, though. Like virtually every other national newspaper, Education Week watched its print subscriptions steadily drop as an increasing number of people accessed the newspaper, its archives, and its research for free online.
And, so, the internal debate began. Should we keep the site free for all? Or, would doing so drain EPE to a dangerous point? After considerable research and soul-searching, we came to the conclusion that edweek.org must restrict access to some of its online resources to paying subscribers, if the Web site and the overall operation are to continue to thrive. It was a tough decision, but the only one that made sense.
The transition to a partly subscriber-only site is not something that happens overnight. In fact, we’ve been building up to this reconfiguration for several years, first with extensive planning, then by requiring registration to access most of the site’s content, and next with an extensive overhaul of edweek.org that wrapped up last fall.
After instituting registration in February 2003, we gleaned a much greater understanding of who was visiting edweek.org and what content they were accessing. Let me share some key statistics and research that informed our decisions: By the fall of 2003, nearly 200,000 people had registered to use the site, and an average of 1.6 million page views were being logged each month.
What we learned (and this was somewhat unexpected) was that a large percentage of the site’s registered users were teachers (34 percent), students (16 percent), and parents (5 percent). In other words, the majority of registered users were not from what we would consider the traditional audience for Education Week.
At the same time, we also learned that the newspaper’s traditional audience of administrators, policymakers, and marketers were the "power users" of the site. They visited more often and viewed more pages during each visit than teachers, parents, and students.
Just as important, of course, is what we learned about the content they were accessing. In a nutshell, we learned that more traditional audience was coming to the site to read the current weekly issue and daily news compendia, use the archives, and access the newspaper’s special reports. Teachers, students, and parents, meanwhile, were more likely to tap into the site’s Issues Pages and other topic-specific content.
In the end, then, we decided to segment the site and the audience as the data had informed us made sense. The redesigned edweek.org site, unveiled last October, was divided into four sections: Education Week, Teacher Magazine, Research Center, and Agent K-12, an online job-recruitment service.
Keeping key business objectives in mind, the new site was designed to:
- Entice our traditional audience to become paying subscribers by focusing on policy and news and by offering such enhancements in the Education Week section of the site as Web-only content and deep levels of customization and personalization.
- Retain our non-traditional Web audience, many of whom are teachers and students, by providing compelling content – specifically in the Teacher and Research Center sections of the site – that would require only registration, not a paid subscription.
- Leave enough of the site open to encourage visitors to become either a paying subscriber or at least a registered user.
In addition to a new organization, the revamped site also includes: a new look, new navigation, improved search capabilities, and a new content-management system to simplify and automate much of the back-end technology. The main idea, of course, was to create a system that allows a single piece of content to be used in multiple ways, such as in e-newsletters, as well as in multiple places within the site.
Even as we seek to increase the value of the subscription-only portions of edweek.org, we believe it’s imperative that the free areas remain useful and engaging. Because we’ve learned that a significant number of our online users are teachers, students, and parents, we intend to keep the Teacher Magazine portion of the site free and open to all. We also plan to beef up the Teacher section with more interactive chats and other Web-only features.
Content on the site’s Research Center section, too, will also remain free and open to all registered users. Popular content in the Research Center includes more than 50 Issues A-Z pages, State Info pages, and Education Counts, an EPE-developed interactive database of hundreds of policy indicators and other quantitative information across the 50 states.
Given demand in the field for research- and data-based decisionmaking, edweek.org’s Research Center seeks to connect policymakers and practitioners with the information they need when
they need it.
So, while the decision to wall off certain sections of the site was not easy, we believe that it is necessary as part of a business strategy to protect the Education Week franchise and to make EPE’s online publishing business self-sustaining.
That said, we will continue to operate edweek.org with EPE’s overall mission in mind: providing the news, context, and perspectives that will ultimately raise the level of discourse in American precollegiate education and lead to lasting school change.
Virginia B. Edwards
President, Editorial Projects in Education
Editor, Education Week and Teacher Magazine
6935 Arlington Road, Suite 100
Bethesda, MD 20814
i just recently paid monry for this subsribtion. I was surprized how the week earlier, I did'nt have to in order to access your site. Are you suggesting that I will have to pay again?
I was glad to find this site...referred here by colleages. Now if we know that we have to keep paying ...I'd rather have a actual magazine sent to my home then. Example: Educational Leadership...
Perhaps you should access what type of individuals will be your group. I beleive that dividing up pay vs. no pay sections may frustrate your long time viewers...also, if you intend to require payment for a service, the service should be valuable and come quickly. I paid two 1/2 weeks ago and I wanted to get to articles after I gave your site my cc#. I was not able to access the information I needed even after I paid. That was frustrating. I wanted to utilize your site then...not when your office opened the following Monday.
I know that maintaining a site is costly and time consuming...But please don't manage this to death and drive away your supporters...
I just recently paid money for this subscription. I was surprised how the week earlier; I didn’t have to in order to access your site. Are you suggesting that I will have to pay again?
I was glad to find this site...referred here by colleagues. Now if we know that we have to keep paying ...I'd rather have an actual magazine sent to my home then. Example: Educational Leadership...
Perhaps you should access what type of individuals will be your group. I believe that dividing up pay vs. no pay sections may frustrate your long time viewers...also, if you intend to require payment for a service, the service should be valuable and come quickly. I paid two 1/2 weeks ago and I wanted to get to articles after I gave your site my cc#. I was not able to access the information I needed even after I paid. That was frustrating. I wanted to utilize your site then...not when your office opened the following Monday.
I know that maintaining a site is costly and time consuming...But please don't manage this to death and drive away your supporters...
Given the research EdWeek has done on its readership's preferences and profiles, I think it's fair to charge the larger "power users" and not charge the teachers, parents, and students. The last thing EdWeek should do is anything that would drive away teachers, parents, and students from its excellent resources.
As a young principal, I already belong to ASCD and I am enrolled in an online degree program for a third masters. I will not pay.
I have neither time nor energy for hassle, and my credit card is not for business use. While I love perusing the web - it needs to be free to work for me.
No district I know of -- in the inner city especially -- is able to offer access to articles at a cost.
I think the new approach is complex, confusing, and ridiculous. There are better ways to make a buck -- add advertising, for example.
What a loss. What a reflection of our economy and the age of commerce in which we live.
What was awesome about this site was that it tapped into the massive, open power of the Internet. Almost all of the content is available for free elsewhere -- you are essentially gathering other people's work. Who will pay for that?
We at edweek.org just want to try to answer some of the comments above. We know that changes like this cause questions, and that's why we've started this blog: to address these questions promptly and publicly.
-- Currently all parts of edweek.org are free to registered users. And registration is free. When we start charging for access to premium content online, those pages still will be free to subscribers of Education Week. You will not have to pay twice.
-- If you are not a subscriber of Education Week, but want to read premium content online, you will have to pay an online subscription fee. That fee will entitle you to all of our content online, but it will not be a subscription to our weekly newspaper.
-- Much of edweek.org will continue to be free to registered users, and some pages -- like the Education Week main page and the Teacher main page -- will be free without registration.
-- If you currently are having problems with your newspaper subscription, here is the Web page where you can report that problem: https://www.kable.com/pub/edwk/cs.asp
-- Again, as a reminder, a partial list of the content that will continue to be free or free with registration includes the main pages of Education Week, Teacher, the Research Center and Agent K-12; the calendar, live chat, tables of contents, Research Center state information pages, issues pages, and Education Counts data.
-- We will sell site licenses with which schools or districts can purchase multiple access to the site.
-- Education Week is the premier newspaper serving the K-12 education community through its reporting on education policy, issues, and developments, as well as its highlighting of people and places that serve as examples for others. Our reporting is original and not available elsewhere.
Gary Kebbel
Interim Executive Producer
In my brief professional time as a principal of rural schools in Maine, I've relied on Ed Week online for the kind of provocative debate, instant information and edited commentary that prevents me from being totally isolated, geographically and intellectually, within the profession.
I'm pursuing a doctorate so I hadve lots of reading to complete weekly, If I wanted more print material, I'd order Ed Week on a subscription basis. My expectation will be that this online change at Ed Week will provide me with additional material not available in print and unique to the online premium service. The best print/online media do that already and have proved their worth. I hope you will continue to do the same. Otherwise, I'm with Melanie on this change.
I've been frequenting this site for a while and I've found its articles to be very informative. Although I have never, ever joined a site that requires a pay subscription, I may consider it for edweek.org, as long as the price is reasonable for me.
Well...what is the cost for full access to edweek.org?? The price does make a difference for many of us.
Existing print subscribers will have access to edweek.org as part of their subscription. Those who do not already have a print subscription to Education Week will have three options:
* Print + online (annual)--readers that wish to receive Education Week in print will also have full access to edweek.org. $79.94 per year.
* Online only (annual)--for readers that only want access to edweek.org and do not want a print subscription to Education Week. $69 per year.
* Online only (monthly)--for readers that would like month-to-month access to edweek.org. $10 per month.
The pathetic response to your blog ought to give you an idea of how many people care whether you charge or not. The notice of your impending close of the free website makes me realize how well served I am by my professional associations.
Julian (Principal from NY)