The Sun and The Telegraph go behind Paywalls

[rogerdraig]

Originally Posted by Damien

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

no i would now say real news is free

if you want made up and sensationalized stuff then that does cost as they have to employ the ( i would get banned for calling them what i think of them ) so called journalists to make it up.

the amazing story of the plane landing on the river and lately the meteor / meteorite show that you can get all the information you need from the various channels twitter ect with out resorting to paid for content

[Russ]

Originally Posted by Damien

. People don't have a right to free quality news.

People requiring this are hardly likely to want to read the Sun.

I would object to this most strongly. OK paying for the news - I'm not happy at that when it has been free for so long but if they want to charge then why not, profits need to be maintained as well as those little green bottles of water for the MD's meetings.

What I object to is £10 a month. What if I think the Sun (or whatever) has gone down in quality in recent weeks? I've lost my £10. At least with the physical copy I can decide not to buy tomorrow's edition.

If they offered it on a pay-as-you-go basis I'd be much more open to the idea. But for this very reason I think they'll never offer it that way.

Originally Posted by rogerdraig

no i would now say real news is free

if you want made up and sensationalized stuff then that does cost as they have to employ the ( i would get banned for calling them what i think of them ) so called journalists to make it up.

the amazing story of the plane landing on the river and lately the meteor / meteorite show that you can get all the information you need from the various channels twitter ect with out resorting to paid for content

CCTV of a plane crash or a flood of tweets about a meteorite can tell you that *something* has happened, but you need someone with experience and contacts to pull the story together. Those people need to be paid for their time.

If you want to live in a dumbed-down universe where all that matters is a couple of one liners and some grainy video footage, then that's fine, but the reality is, you are never going to know what's really going on in the world, or have access to enough information to decide for yourself, without paid journalists doing the legwork for you.

[Russ]

Playing devil's advocate (plus acknowledging I don't know how these things work), what's wrong with the money they get from selling physical copies as well as the income from online advertisers?

Dumbed down? Frankly all the news is now dumbed down.The present owners aren't prepared to pay the money necessary to really provide a good standard of journalism.I wouldn't mind paying IF standards overall actually improved.

Originally Posted by Maggy J

Dumbed down? Frankly all the news is now dumbed down.The present owners aren't prepared to pay the money necessary to really provide a good standard of journalism.I wouldn't mind paying IF standards overall actually improved.

It's dumbed down partly because they're trying to generate page-views.

Originally Posted by Damien

It's dumbed down partly because they're trying to generate page-views.

It's all been dumbed down for years because news proprietors have cut everything to bare bones in the name of profit..Even news sources have been severely reduced to cut costs.They are now losing money on hard copies so have to start charging on the internet versions to try and maintain what profits they can..However they have failed entirely to realise that the internet is used by people who aren't that keen to pay for what was free originally and will just go and find another 'free' version.

[rogerdraig]

Originally Posted by Chris

CCTV of a plane crash or a flood of tweets about a meteorite can tell you that *something* has happened, but you need someone with experience and contacts to pull the story together. Those people need to be paid for their time.

If you want to live in a dumbed-down universe where all that matters is a couple of one liners and some grainy video footage, then that's fine, but the reality is, you are never going to know what's really going on in the world, or have access to enough information to decide for yourself, without paid journalists doing the legwork for you.

after my dealing with them i am quite happy to do the leg work myself i found more video than sky or the bbc put out on meteorite most of it less grainy than their efforts plus didnt have to listen to stupid people asking inane questions

the dumbing down imho opinion is being caused by these journalists

Originally Posted by Russ

Playing devil's advocate (plus acknowledging I don't know how these things work), what's wrong with the money they get from selling physical copies as well as the income from online advertisers?

Online advertising makes no money really. The only way it works at a large scale which requires pages that are very cheap to produce and are hit often. It's expensive to produce a page on a news site which is why we're increasingly seeing link-bait blogs or picture gallerys. How many times have you seen "The Ten Best [whatever]" on a news site? They are knocked up quickly and are designed to get hits.

When a 30 minute to create page about the 10 funniest cats written by an unpaid intern generates more income for a news site than an in-depth article about the Cypriot crisis written by a professional financial journalist we have a big problem.

[Osem]

Originally Posted by danielf

I wasn't serious. Well, not entirely anyway. I honestly wonder if the Sun even prints 20 articles a month that are worth reading.

20 a year is being generous...

Originally Posted by rogerdraig

after my dealing with them i am quite happy to do the leg work myself i found more video than sky or the bbc put out on meteorite most of it less grainy than their efforts plus didnt have to listen to stupid people asking inane questions

the dumbing down imho opinion is being caused by these journalists

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.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Russ

Playing devil's advocate (plus acknowledging I don't know how these things work), what's wrong with the money they get from selling physical copies as well as the income from online advertisers?

The problem, according to the Murdochs at least, is that the free availability of news is reducing the sales of physical copies.

TBH, I'd be surprised if that weren't the case. In and around London at least, the time when most newspapers is sold is during the rush hour. I've been commuting for years, and while it used to be the case that most of the people on my train read newspapers, the things I see being read more than anything else are tablets and phones. Oddly, the number of people reading books doesn't seem to have changed much.

Now, I realise that that is hardly a scientific or exhaustive survey, but if that pattern is repeated (even if it's just across the south east of England), then the news paper owners are losing a lot of potential sales of physical papers.

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 Maggy J

It's all been dumbed down for years because news proprietors have cut everything to bare bones in the name of profit..Even news sources have been severely reduced to cut costs.They are now losing money on hard copies so have to start charging on the internet versions to try and maintain what profits they can..However they have failed entirely to realise that the internet is used by people who aren't that keen to pay for what was free originally and will just go and find another 'free' version.

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.

---------- Post added at 11:59 ---------- Previous post was at 11:56 ----------

Originally Posted by Chris

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.

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

[Russ]

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.