Is there a thread for the rapid death of the newspaper industry?

Interesting debate yesterday - it'll be on the radio later - but if you can't listen there's some info here.
http://www.beehivecity.com/newspapers/alan-rusbriger-vs-john-witherow-on-the-future-of-newspapers191805/

John Witherow said that The Times and The Sunday Times would “easily” lose 90 per cent of its online audience when the two titles went behind the online £2 a week ‘paywall’ next month. A massive fall.
Alan Rusbridger conceded that if the Times/Sunday Times made a roaring success of the pay wall his newspapers would eventually have to follow suit. A surprising concession.

I don't think that's very surprising, but then I don't think the paywall will be a roaring success either.

One good effect of paywall at the Times: I can't imagine their BTL commenters from the US state of Dumbfuckistan would pay for access.

i think the paywall stuff is going to be a disaster across the board

It's only worth having a paywall if you have content that people are willing to pay for - ie paywalls work perfectly well in B2B and financial media but will be a disaster in consumer newspapers. The FT's paywall works because everyone expenses it, who'd do that for the Times?

Read somewhere that one possibility was to bundle it for a nominal-ish fee with Sky subscription, but despite the tentacly nature of Rupert Moloch's empire, he perhaps wdn't want to yoke two parts of it that closely.

Yes, tentacly.

When I first got internet access in '96 various papers (p. sure the Times was one) had pay-only online access. It didn't do very well and news.bbc and other free online news sites took off so they took down the pay wall. Admittedly internet availability and newspaper profit margins are very different now, but surprised that I haven't seen any mention of it previously being paywalled.

To be honest I was surprised that the Guardian changed from free content + paywalled crossword to having everything free. I could see the crossword being carrot enough for a certain small percentage of readers, and I don't know how else they'd get more people to pay. (How much money do they make off the "ring this number to order a book tangentially mentioned in this piece" thing? Enough to subsidise anything?)

From the looks of Ned's link above, SoulMates brings in a fair wodge, and presumably a few other things (do they still have that dvd rental thing), as clickthrough sites. Still not really convinced by either model tbh, in terms of long-term sustainability. Rusbridger makes his case here, and while I agree with his negative comments about paywalls, I'm not convinced by his positive comments about ad revenue.

Still don't see how you can buy the paper and read the website without paying twice...

Get a feeling that's part of the dastardly plan, though - at least in the short term.

New Times site live at www.thetimes.co.uk now. Like it a lot; v clean. Don't see me paying for it, mind.

Love the fact that everything except the homepage - even the blogs - is behind the paywall.

Georgia for the main text doesn't look great. But other than that the design looks really good - much better than the Guardian redesign.

Paywall still has a handy side-door where you can just reach over and flip the latch at timesonline.co.uk. James Murdoch probably nagging his dad to get it fixed right now.

It's free (with registration) for a month I think, while the main times site is still running, then the paywall goes up.

Georgia for the main text doesn't look great.

Strongly disagree as I am a huge Georgia stan.

I love Georgia as a general font for when I'm writing, but not really for this somehow. It's a bit skeletal looking to my eye.

Well, in general it's gorgeous. There's something very calming about it, very balanced. Maybe the best newspaper front page on the web?

In a world where the content is irrelevant

I also like how prominent the leader articles are. More newspaper sites should do that.

Heh the numbers in the bottom-left "Most Read" box need a bit of alignment...

Love Georgia also.
Some daft use of Flash, including the graphic above the leaders.

Ohhhh the hands on the clock move??!

That is pretty cool, though you could do that with SVG...

'If paywall doesn't work I'm in the shit', admits News Int's commercial chief

The owner of the Daily Express and Daily Star has indicated that he wants to buy the Sun newspaper.

Richard Desmond told the BBC he had £1bn to spend and that he was keen to add to his stable of titles which includes the celebrity magazine OK!

He said he would run the Sun, which is Britain's biggest-selling newspaper, in a manner that was "more efficient in today's market place".

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Y9R7_4I-yLk/SmrFTEM_lYI/AAAAAAAAAK8/IOwrylaQtVU/s320/Dinosaur+Jr.jpg

So not gonna happen. I can't see Murdoch selling The Sun.

given that the daily star is a clone of the sun - the last redesign brief copied all their fonts with, i think, the hope that people would buy the star by mistake - it wouldn't make sense for desmond either: he'd have to merge them. but yeah, i assume he's just winding up the murdochs.

Attention sub-editors

massive lol

It's on Press Gazette as well. Genuine production howler.

Dewey Defeats headghgh

headline headghgh in topless bar

"We Wgfgfgfg"

(It'll be on Have I got News for you, doubtless)

ah: "The error comes as journalists across Johnston Press mull group-wide strike action in protest against staffing levels and the introduction of the Atex production system.

"Press Gazette understands that Atex, which allows reporters to input stories directly on to page layouts, has been introduced across Johnston Press titles in the south of England."

http://editorial.jpress.co.uk/Includes/Images/BTJ/front-bed22.gif

fwiw

who do you believe? the bedford time and citizen's website or your own lying eyes?

http://imgur.com/xIC0G.png

News Sharter?

*creature harbours grudge against blodes

LOLLLLLL, blondes

"News Shower" is very Morris-esque.

It's actually the News Shopper, ahem, paper of record in Lewisham & Catford.

Have you noticed issues with crows?

It's only ever guns, crows and crack these days.

Don't forget the foxes. Animals be fighting back.

Crow update: http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/8208903.CATFORD__Elderly_dancer_reveals_crow_attack_horror/

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/resources/images/1323867/

keen dancer and former actress, you say

she's no tipi hedren

She's Edna Lunt

from IMDB

Edna Lunt:
Letters of Service (2004) .... Dancing Patient