The Sun and The Telegraph go behind Paywalls

[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.

Originally Posted by 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.

The Sun is quality, on its own terms. It knows its target audience and writes for it exceptionally well, hence its market-leading position.

[danielf]

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.

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.

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 danielf

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.

They could increase it later slowly and find the sweet spot. I think 20 free articles is a bit too generous, the FT has 8, but again they can adapt that to be less and less as well.

Originally Posted by Maggy J

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.

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.

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Chris

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.

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.

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Damien

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

Its not surviving, it's in the last throws in print form as it is which is why they're moving to charge on the net and at least unlike the print equivalent it's up to date, why people buy a paper to read yesterdays news these days is beyond me, I haven't done for years and I probably won't be subscribing to any online either if they aren't at least add free.

---------- Post added at 16:36 ---------- Previous post was at 16:26 ----------

Originally Posted by danielf

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.

Speaking of the times, what a great job they've done with the iPad app combining the paper with it's Sunday sister and presumably cutting swathes of staff from the digital desk, frozen pages, pages refusing flatly to load, crashing constantly, missing pictures etc and this is what they expect us to pay for?

[rogerdraig]

Originally Posted by Chris

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.

i like more than pretty pictures ( though pretty ones can be fun :P ) and you can find lots of experts on most subjects i have looked for

yes you have to check they are giving good information by getting where possible more than one to corroborate story / information but that's hardly any different to the press who i now just automatically assume are lying to me

OK ... and I'm curious, why do you assume they're lying to you? And do you mean that they are politically slanted, or that they're just totally making stuff up?

[danielf]

Originally Posted by Chris

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

Are we still talking about the Sun?

[rogerdraig]

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

[toonlight]

Originally Posted by rogerdraig

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

I've said the same thing for years rogerdraig, most of the news is just table gossip some singling of truth but not much, I stopped reading with news papers over 7 years ago, wasn't much in them back then worth for price they wanted. If the talent was put back in place in the news & was balanced may be I'd buy a news paper.... only then.

Peace out
Toolight

Where do you all get your news from then?

By the way the idea that you can balance out the news by taking it from different sources is a bit of a fallacy in my view. What matters is the quality of the source. If you read two biased sources to 'get both sides of the story' then all you've done is read two biased stories, it's wrong to assume those are the only two sides or that the truth lies somewhere in-between them. One good source is worth far more than multiple poor ones.