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

“There are certain facts you can't argue with,” says one senior executive. “If the recession lasts too long, we will run out of money.”

In much the same way that they would support an author jailed on trumped-up charges in a distant failed state, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and 50 other luminaries signed an open letter of support for the 218-year-old newspaper. At a subsequent public meeting in London, chaired by the comedian David Mitchell, 300 well-wishers included the actor Simon Callow, the broadcaster John Humphries and the film critic Barry Norman.

Wonder what a Venn diagram of this vs Roman Polanski campaigners looks like.

The end result:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y109/mozzer232/FATHER_TED_Down_with_this_sort_of_t.jpg

Not newspapers, but Conde Nast is closing Gourmet and Modern Bride.

this article is HILARIOUS

http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site

in the "hysterical laughter that becomes hysterical crying" sense

It's totally misleading, too: most of their readers get it for free w/cable subscription so of course nobody's going to pay for it. (Also, isn't Newsday shit? Hardly news that it's tough to sell rubbish)

so why bother trying to charge for it if "most of their readers get it for free"?

to get $$ iirc

my times is thinking about it too: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/media/21questions.html

The web site redesign and relaunch cost the Dolans $4 million, according to Mr. Jimenez. With those 35 people, they've grossed about $9,000.

so why bother trying to charge for it if "most of their readers get it for free"?
i'm sure there's a money deal in here somewhere: they'll be charging *somebody* for all these "free" subscriptions. Also "look, free access to our website (that's a $xx value, when you sign for x+y".

I mean, putting up the paywall isn't going to lose them any real money anyway. Drive-by web readers are worth bupkis in ad money terms.

Newsday was the only decent NY tabloid when they still published a city edition. I have been picking it up maybe 2x a week for the sports, but less often since street price went to $1.

lol

The Times and the Sunday Times are to start charging for content online in June.

Users will be charged £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's subscription for access to both papers' websites, publisher News International has announced.

What I don't understand is what this means for people who buy the actual newspaper and then want to read the website. Pay twice?

£1? How much is the actual newspaper daily?

The Times and the Sunday Times are to start charging for content online in June

Shurely they're gonna have to generate some first?

who's shirley?

Think it's £1, but it's a long time since I last paid for a copy since there's always three copies lying around at work unread and because, hey, we have the internet.

Apparently they're expecting 60,000 people to pay each day. WTF?

Assume this is a ploy so's somebody can write a piece in July about why they only got 6 subscribers and how it's the BBC's fault.

Go to: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article7076987.ece - read the comments and try to find the one reader who says she'll pay for website access.

Quality in-depth interviewing from Eamonn Holmes on that article.

Mrs Brooks added that News International’s two other titles, The Sun and The News of the World, would follow.

Oh man I only just read this bit.

suicide. it's not like news won't appear on the net faster elsewhere, and probably better reported.

Probably?

i don't read anything in daily print but the irish times tbh. their website is free, but rte.ie replicates it just in case they change that. print edition still gonna be a purchase for me most days regardless.

so, i mean i have no idea what the standard of writing/comment is in your lefty propaganda sheets.

i did get landed with the sunday independent (irish version) on a train journey once, after the death of a socialite model. genuinely fucking painfully awful shit paper.

this is the standard the times is setting for its front page these days:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00701/TTH250101CC_RGB_701134a.jpg

sorry, btw.

i did get landed with the sunday independent (irish version) on a train journey once, after the death of a socialite model

just hide the spoon and lighter and say she was like that when you got there

i rate the irish times actually, i compared the news content vs a copy of the telegraph and the guardian and the proportion of ideologically purblind 'x says y, oh noes' crap was easily the lowest, most of the editorial and features content was at least as good too

they also get to crib the best articles out of other papers! (and kevin mccarra)

arah shure there's a week's reading itn the times fergawdshakes.

also, crosaire on his worst day has yet to be equalled

if this does fail dismally, and i can't see why it wouldn't, what will be the ultimate outcome for the times, the sun and news intnl? can we expect the guardian etc to mop up all the spare ad revenue?

and have the daily mail said anything about this? i'm always surprised how the mail have masses of content and high quality photos on there, aren't they leaking money by the shedload?

I don't know whether this actually makes a significant difference, but I'm guessing the Mail demographic probably buys more papers than, say, ones with a less pinched editorial target audience?

I'm guessing this will be the end of the road for Rupert, but not the News International papers. After six months it will be deemed a total failure, then Murdoch's kids and NI execs will use this failure to get rid of Dad, then it will all go free again.

The one thing I heard about as a potential way to make it work is to package it with the Sky tv deal (an extra fiver a month say gets you total access to all Times Online content). I've read others saying that while it fails the amount they've supposedly 'lost' will be used as an extra stat to beat the BBC with.

Really is difficult to see it succeeding tho.

I speak from a position of no knowledge, but I don't see how charging can be worse than the status quo - it's not like they lose out by charging

Well, there's online advertising revenue, the very thing The Guardian (improbably imo) is claiming will allow them to succeed. That would certainly go down with the pay wall Times Online, whether the subscription makes up for the ad revenue loss is I suppose the thing that everyone's waiting to see.

diminished traffic -> fewer advertisers?
ditto position of knowledge but ehhh.

Looks alright:

http://paidcontent.org/images/editorial/h_large/thetimes.co.uk-homepage-may-17-l.png

http://paidcontent.co.uk/image/set/times

It does look nice. Although it bothers me that full justification still doesn't work properly on the web.

don;t even read it when it's free so

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...