The Sun and the Telegraph to charge for online content
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James Cridland posted on Tuesday 26th March at 21:03Both The Sun and The Telegraph have announced plans to charge for their website.
The Sun looks likely to copy stablemate The Times’s plans to simply put everything behind a paywall. The Telegraph is using a metered approach, with the first twenty pages free for users every month, and a charge to continue reading.
Is charging for free content “untenable”, as The Sun thinks it is? Or will these newspapers slide into oblivion, and readers flock to other free services like BBC News or The Guardian?
I’m more concerned about the possibility of News International falling to pressure from a few ratty middle-aged feminists who want Page 3 outlawed.
The Sun’s paywall will go up on August 1st with a £2 per week charge. This will include exclusive online Premier League highlights.
To be honest, most people won’t pay for news, and people who share news stories will just go to the free sites, and share the stories on those sites, meaning more traffic will go to free news sites, and less will go to those behind the paywall. Putting news content behind a paywall will prove eventually to be a failing strategy.
To be honest, most people won’t pay for news, and people who share news stories will just go to the free sites, and share the stories on those sites, meaning more traffic will go to free news sites, and less will go to those behind the paywall. Putting news content behind a paywall will prove eventually to be a failing strategy.
While I agree to an extent for general news, newspapers need to monitise their online copy. You pay to buy a paper copy and why shouldn’t you do that for their online version?
BBC News online is subsidised by the licence fee and The Guardian drains money by having all of it’s content for free. Is it worth having premium niche content on their website for example for free?
What premium content does the Guardian have on their website?
I don’t go on their website often, but when I’ve checked out the Media Guardian pages they seem to report stories a while after other sources have.
While I agree to an extent for general news, newspapers need to monitise their online copy. You pay to buy a paper copy and why shouldn’t you do that for their online version?
That would be great, if I actually bought newspapers. The truth is, I don’t buy newspapers, as they need so much decoding these days as most of their stories are editorialised so much that it feels like I’m being talked down to and told what to think. I just want the facts, not editorial spin.
At least with most broadcast news sites, there is far less editorial spin to decode, the main exceptions being Fox News Channel and Sun News Network..
What premium content does the Guardian have on their website?
All of the content from their specialist supplements which then gets published for free on their website.
That would be great, if I actually bought newspapers. The truth is, I don’t buy newspapers,
Then should you expect to read the same copy which a newspaper reader has paid for?
What they could do is have some sort of code etc… with their newspaper to allow access content online for that day.
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It’s a simple race, isn’t it? Will The Times run out of readers before The Guardian runs out of money?