Originally Posted by Damien (Post 35553576)

Broadsheet newspapers haven't made money for years with only a few exceptions (Financial Times). The Guardian and The Telegraph have laid off staff in recent months and it certainly wasn't done to maximise profits it was done to stem unsustainable losses. The proprietors have been subsidising these newspapers for a long time now. The Internet has been one of biggest reasons why they're losing money and they've been expected to put their content online for free. It's clearly not a sustainable way to run an organisation.

I think they're well aware people on the Internet want content for free and that's why they've been resisting paywalls for so long but it can't continue any longer. There hasn't been the solution to make free online Journalism work and they've had to go to the only recourse left to them. Charge the users. In the end I don't think they care if people go elsewhere to get their free content. Even if only 1% stick around and pay that is 1% more than they would be getting before.

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And the content behind The Times' paywall is good. None of this rubbish.

Originally Posted by Russ (Post 35553579)

But.....The Sun....

I find that hard to take seriously if they're going to use the "you want quality journalism - you have to pay for it" line.

Originally Posted by Chris (Post 35553575)

And, speaking of Murdoch, it begins to appear that he was ahead of the game (again) ... his enemies predicted the Times paywall experiment would flop. It didn't. The FT has since followed. Now the Telegraph and the Sun are following suit. We are very soon going to end up with all our national newspapers charging for their content and, I have to say, I can't blame them for it.

Originally Posted by danielf (Post 35553585)

It's madness to think that a decent newspaper can survive on advertising revenue alone. It costs a lot of money to produce a good newspaper, and it's time people wake up to this fact.

I can't see £2 a month being enough though. £10 a month seems more realistic.

Originally Posted by Maggy J (Post 35553586)

To be honest if I was going to read newspapers digitally on a regular basis then I'd get a Kindle subscription and read it in that format.

Originally Posted by Chris (Post 35553590)

And they would be happy for you to do that. The Telegraph however is charging £10 a month for that option, as opposed to £2 for access to the website and smartphone apps.

This is the one thing I don't understand about the price structure - they are allowing smartphone access at the £2 point but charging £10 for the tablet edition. I can see the sense of differentiating between a smartphone app and a tablet app; presumably the smartphone app carries pared-down content. But putting full website access in the £2 bracket rather than in the premium £10 bracket alongside the tablet edition, when a tablet will run the full website without any problems, seems a bit odd.

Originally Posted by Damien (Post 35553513)

News costs to produce. It's not free to make, if nobody pays then it can't survive.

Originally Posted by danielf (Post 35553594)

If it's anything like the Times: With the tablet option you download the entire paper to the tablet and you can then read it at your leisure (though you can obvioulsy access the website as well). You can also keep the backlog on a tablet. But I agree, the difference in price seems excessive.

Originally Posted by Chris (Post 35553573)

As I said, if all you want from your 'news' is pretty pictures, you're sorted. However if you want analysis you need to read reporters with contacts and experience. Very few bloggers and tweeters have that.

Originally Posted by Chris (Post 35553761)

<snip> do you mean that they are politically slanted, or that they're just totally making stuff up?

Originally Posted by rogerdraig (Post 35553842)

some are obviously political slanted in either direction other have their own agenda

from personal experience they are willing to do anything and hurt anyone including children to get their story and only the story they want to print and don't like silly things like the truth alter what they want to say

( willing to pm a fuller story it can take a while to write lol )

suffice to say what ever they print now i take with a huge pinch of skepticism