A reader left this comment yesterday:
Ian, did you notice that Civil Beat has subtly changed its layout?
There is a sports, business and entertainment section of Civil Beat which I only noticed today, although it might have been there for a while or always, for all I know.
Likewise, the Media section has been lowered to the bottom right of the layout, replaced by Breaking News that include international events.
I might have missed all this earlier, but it seems to be to be brand new and unannounced to the public.
If this is brand new, then in regards to the Star Advertiser … this means war!
If Civil Beat does engage in some advertising to supplement its expansion, then that would mean the beginning of the end for the SA’s hegemony (the SA no longer has a monopoly on news, it is merely dominant now that CB has expanded its focus).
A quick look at Civil Beat seems to confirm that they’re kicking up the competition a notch or two. Here’s one ad prominently displayed:
The link takes you directly to a list of comparisons. A little self serving, as you would expect, but it highlights Civil Beat’s strengths. “Staff journalists 100% dedicated to investigative news,” “Washington D.C. bureau,” and more.
And there are lots of signs of activity. Civil Beat says they’re hiring, and other “why buy the paper?” ads are sprinkled through the site.
Can they pull off this direct challenge to the Star-Advertiser, with its much larger staff of reporters and editors? Keep watching.
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What I like about the printed SA are the restaurant coupons and the travel agency ads. We are already planning our trip to Italy next year. I generally avoid the sensational articles about the latest rape, murder, or traffic accident and focus on other news. Ever noticed how anti-Obama the cartoons on the editorial page of the SA tend to be? That bothers me.
Just switched to a $50/year SA digital subscription from print delivery, which was going to be about $200. My take is that the SA wants to get paying subscribers to drop print. Not sure about the ad supplements though. They aren’t in the digital edition. I guess more might start showing up in Midweek.
I’d say the pay wall is strategic in a business sense.
With the money I’ve saved, I’ll now consider also subscribing to CB.
Civil Beat just ran an article by Richard Halloran entitled “The Rising East – Hawaii Is America’s Gateway to Asia”. Reading it, I felt like I was reading an old National Geographic from the 1950s. Talk about Cold War dinosaur.
Now, if CB is willing to run something like that, they really are shedding some of that “alternative” halo they like to wear. They are moving into the mainstream here, even into the mainstream of a generation or two ago. (Even a generation ago, the average person did not believe the simplistic perspective Halloran reflects.)
That’s one small step for an online public affairs newspaper, one giant leap into a local news rivalry. This means war!