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

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...

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.

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