WII’s Premium VIP Content Is Now Wine Executive News

The VIP premium content section of Wine Industry Insight has now become Wine Executive News.

The change has resulted from two rewarding years of working with both our free (News Fetch) and premium subscribers. Because our premium subscribers are  — with few exceptions — winery owners, top wine company and industry supplier executives, financial movers/shakers, bankers as well as merger and acquisition players.

These players know that having information no one else has and getting it first means better profits, opportunities and warnings about looming pitfalls.

CHANGES ROOTED IN REALITY

Wine Industry Insight began in early December 2008 as an adjunct to (not a replacement for) my old publications, Wine Business Monthly and the Insider which are ably staffed and invaluable sources of information. The “pay wall” went up about this time of year in 2009 because it was obvious that in-depth articles don’t spontaneously create themselves for nothing.

GIVING AWAY TOO MUCH FOR FREE

Over the past two years, I’ve tried to balance the demand for free with the financial demands of original reporting. That’s the reason I launched the free News Fetch and have expanded it over the months.

I have tinkered with this free/paid balance over the months. One of the things that has become clear is that those who can benefit from the paid content really, really need it. And they want it fast and they want it as confidentially as possible.

But my desire to “let the world know” about original reporting has resulted in an unhappy situation: I have given away too much information. So much that the paying subscribers have, on occasion, lost a competitive edge.

And so have I.

Various media outlets — from local to national — have taken stories I have broken, articles I have worked hard to develop and called the stories their own. It may be lazy, and the mark of a scoundrel, but it’s not illegal.

LESS FOR FREE, FASTER FOR PREMIUM

Premium subscribers have not been shy in telling me that media freeloading on Wine Industry Insight’s original reporting has cost them an edge.  So, from now on, the information about premium content that you find in News Fetch and on the WII web site will be less detailed and may be delayed a bit.

That will make little difference to 85.7% of the 14,000+ News Fetch subscribers who are looking for current news in order to maintain a well-versed, overall view of the industry. Most folks in the industry need to be well informed and don’t need to move mountains of money based on  current, proprietary information.

CHANGES IN SUBSCRIBER INFORMATION DELIVERY

Instead of relying exclusively on News Fetch to let premium subscribers know that new articles are available, Wine Executive News will provide an “opt-in” mailing list to give advance notice of articles, data and other content.

SUBSCRIPTIONS NOW $159 PER YEAR

Subscriptions to Wine Executive News are $159 per year — the same as Wine Business Insider was when I launched it in 1991. For what it may (or may not) be worth, that $159 in 1991 dollars is worth more than $254 today according to the Consumer Price Index.

LET ME KNOW HOW YOU FEEL, ALL OPINIONS VALUABLE

My goal is to provide the information people need. News Fetch serves most readers and is supported by our advertisers. But as I continue to evolve this information enterprise, your input is valuable.

Please let me know how you feel. The only way I can make News Fetch, Wine Executive News and Wine Industry Insight work for you is to know how you feel about all this. You can always simply hit “reply” to any News Fetch, and it comes into my email.

My email is: lewis.perdue@wineindustryinsight.com. I answer everything. Sometimes with delays thanks to workload or the fact that —  for some weird reason — many perfectly legitimate emails end up in the spam folder which takes longer to slog through.