Slashdot Mirror
The Times Erects a Paywall, Plays Double Or Quits
DCFC writes "News International, owners of The Times and The Sunday Times announced today that from June readers will be required to pay £1 per day or £2 per week to access content. Rupert Murdoch is delivering on his threat to make readers pay, and is trying out this experiment with the most important titles in his portfolio. No one knows if this will work — there is no consensus on whether it is a good or bad thing for the industry, but be very clear that if it succeeds every one of his competitors will follow. Murdoch has the luxury of a deep and wide business, so he can push this harder than any company that has to rely upon one or two titles for revenue."
...before Murdoch destroyed one of the greatest newspapers in the world. I'd gladly pay to read the NYT or the Washington Post online, just as I've paid for the WSJ online for a decade, but pay to read Murdoch's crap? Heck, I'd gladly pay money to keep it from showing up in my search results.
Murdoch's crap now includes the WSJ. Just sayin....
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
The Wall Street Journal is/was almost like that. When he first took it over, the price doubled to $2 then went to $2.50, then to $3, then back down to $2.50, then back to $2 then lastly, my local grocery store is charging the sales tax on top of it which is 6% for a $2.12 paper in my area. It drove me and the damn cashiers batty.
In the meantime, I was still getting the $99 - $109 annual subscription "special" in the mail. I don't like the Morning deliveries on my driveway.
Now, considering that the daily news is available for free - still - and the WSJ exclusive content isn't all that it can be (it pales in comparison to the Economist), I think Murdoch can stick his papers down under.
You mean like Wikinews, which already exists or something different like Indymedia or the whole blogosphere?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I don't have a credit card
At least where I live (Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA), banks and credit unions offer VISA or MasterCard debit cards to their checking account customers at no additional charge.
Pay walled news is the best thing that could happen to the news industry. Now people will go looking for news elsewhere and they will actually find NEWS. *cough*http://www.unknownnews.org/*cough*
Market fundamentalism is funny.
The worth of something is not handed down from on high by your god, the 'Invisible Hand'. The worth of things cannot always be quantified in monetary terms.
Furthermore, the notion that your mythical 'market' can correctly assign prices seems to have been blown out of the water by the recent failure of that market to correctly price financial derivatives. Which is why mainstream economics doesn't actually take your kind of market-worship seriously anymore.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
You still can't use them for more than you have in your account, hence *debit*
Certainly you can. They love it when you do. It generates all kinds of tasty fees for them. NOM NOM NOM
Here's one newspaper who tried it.
http://www.observer.com/2010/media/after-three-months-only-35-subscriptions-newsdays-web-site
It cost them $4m dollars to set up the paywall. They got 35 subscribers at $5 per week, so it would take 440 years just to recover the cost of setting up the paywall, assuming no transaction charges.
Not anymore (as of August of this year). Unless you allow them to do it, anyway. It's the only good thing to seem to come out of Congress last year, which makes me wonder what's wrong with it.
The license fee is optional - just don't have a TV.
The BBC are having to slim down at the moment, losing websiteas and radio stations. And that's a Labour government who Murdoch doesn't like anymore.
His news stuff isn't /meant/ to be news. It's meant as entertaining (to draw them in) propaganda (to get them angry at the "right" things).
Unfortunately his target audience is not generally intelligent enough to tell that it's not news.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Have you checked what comes up from the WSJ on Google News since the takeover? Biased right-wing crap.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
If you are looking for quality investigative reporting, I'm not sure The Times is the best place to find it. It comes from the same people that bring you Fox News. It isn't as bad as Fox News, but there are better papers out there.
Have you tried to live without a TV in the UK?
Yes.
The TV Licensing people refused to believe that I didn't have one and kept pestering me to get a license. One year I had to sign two copies of the "I promise I don't have a TV set" form within a fortnight, speak to them on the phone and to deal with a TV License Inspector who turned up on my doorstep at 6pm one day.
Whilst the TVLA are threatening and downright obnoxious, they can also be ignored. You don't have to inform them that you don't have a TV, or sign anything and if an inspector turns up then you simply tell him to go away and refuse to let him in. The inspectors have no right to enter your property without your permission unless they have a search warrant, and they can't get a search warrant without some reasonably good evidence that you have a TV. I.e. ignore them and there's nothing they can do but make idle threats.
They aren't quite as bad as they used to be though - they used to regularly send me letters with "YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW" emblazoned on the _outside_ of the envelope. It's a shame I didn't have much money back then, because if I did I would've sued them for libel.
http://blog.nexusuk.org