Newspaper Pay Walls

Has anyone signed up to the trial and now paid for the news limited (HS, Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail) sites? Do you think it offers value?

Fairfax has also made some significant changes/announcements to their operations this morning and will move to a paywall, change their print to the size of the AFR, amongst other changes
 
I would think the number of hits will drop by about 90%, not much point in advertising there any more.

Goodbye Fairfax, probably best to sell the whole lot to Gina :)
 
I would think the number of hits will drop by about 90%, not much point in advertising there any more.

Goodbye Fairfax, probably best to sell the whole lot to Gina :)

Save that you are now showing your ad to people who have credit cards, not just everyone, which might or might not encourage certain advertisers.
 
Getting people to pay for news is a stupid idea!

People will not pay for reading the news online.....this in turn reduces traffics and thus advertising revenue.

A real opportunity for competitor to trump Fairfax (www.smh.com.au) or New Ltd (www.news.com.au).

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.
 
I'll stick my hand up. Paid for a subscription to the Australian. News.com is awful and AFR too expensive. Business Spectator is a good free one though.
 
I'll pay a subscription for the SMH.

I've bought it most days since I was about 15. I still buy the broadsheet everyday and read it on the train into the city. These days, I'm always the only person on the train reading a newspaper. I don't even see anybody reading the Tele, let alone the Herald these days.

I've got the SMH app on my iPad, but prefer the website. I'll pay for it when I have to.

Must be grim times to work in a newspaper office. A mate of mine is a journo with The Australian. I think they've got bad news coming this week, too.

Scott
 
Getting people to pay for news is a stupid idea!

People will not pay for reading the news online.....this in turn reduces traffics and thus advertising revenue.

I agree to a point, but it will get to a point where there will be very limited free news online. People will get sick of NineMSN pretty quickly.

If you want opinion, investigative journailsm and/or to read the best writers, you will either have to buy a paper, or buy an online subscription.

I can't understand why it hasn't happened sooner.
 
Must be grim times to work in a newspaper office. A mate of mine is a journo with The Australian. I think they've got bad news coming this week, too.

Scott

It sounds like they will have some bad news later in the week. It's interesting watching what's happening in the US. The New Orleans daily paper will soon only print three days a week, and has cut a third of it's staff.

It's the first major daily in the US to cut to three days a week. I doubt it will be the last.
 
I agree to a point, but it will get to a point where there will be very limited free news online. People will get sick of NineMSN pretty quickly.

If you want opinion, investigative journailsm and/or to read the best writers, you will either have to buy a paper, or buy an online subscription.

I can't understand why it hasn't happened sooner.


I wondered the same thing.

I suspect paper sales would have dropped off significantly with people increasingly reading free online.

People will still want to read the news and will eventually come around to the idea, or will go back to hard copy.

I have a paid subscription with the Australian.
 
I agree to a point, but it will get to a point where there will be very limited free news online. People will get sick of NineMSN pretty quickly.......

Have a look at the lead/main story on ninemsn each day, if it is not about a murder, then it is something related to violence. And most of these stories, imo have no newsworthy or public interest element to them.
 
Yep, it will always be easy to get free updates on what is happening around the place.

People will have to pay for analysis and opinion and investigative stuff etc. That's the model. I'll pay for that stuff.

The other threat to Fairfax is Gina Rinehart. She is now pushing for three seats on the board (two of them are probably for her) and she wants a say in editorial.
 
This may infact be a revolution in news.

Sure many of us will crave for the old style editorials, opinion pieces etc but many of us will be relieved that we are rid of the 'over analysis', the chasing drama headlines, the increasingly tabloid cliches etc.

I believe "news' has been in crisis for a long time. We actually have too much and the industry just breeds onto itself.

There is actually not that much which imo is 'newsworthy'. The rest is padding.

I will be more than happy to login to say yahoo or gmail and check out the free news services they provide. Getting brief snapshots of world events and then digging further if really need be.

We can already subscribe to news feeds from many sources for free anyway.
 
many of us will be relieved that we are rid of the 'over analysis', the chasing drama headlines, the increasingly tabloid cliches etc.

*snip*

I will be more than happy to login to say yahoo or gmail and check out the free news services they provide. Getting brief snapshots of world events and then digging further if really need be.

We can already subscribe to news feeds from many sources for free anyway.

I suspect you might find that the free services are the ones that resort to the very kind of attention-getting behaviour that you refer to here. They're going to have to do something to stand out from the crowd.
The paid-for services will be propped up by the fees they receive - and their reputations.
 
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