Tag Archives: paywalls

Martin Moore: #futureofnews is ‘not so bleak, but not so rosy either’

Great post from Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, on paywalls, business models and collaboration in journalism. The post is worth reading in full, but some of the important points Moore makes include:

The future of advertising as part of a newsroom’s business model:

The paywall is not the only way to sustain the digital newsroom. Advertising – much maligned by many – could yet make online non-paywall newspaper content viable within 5 years.

The problems with paywalls:

Even if paywalls provide a secure financial future for news organisations – which right now seems unlikely – they will reduce the pool of shared information, and cut those news organisations’ content off from the openness, sharing and linking that characterises the web.

But perhaps most interesting in the post is Moore’s own suggested model for news and revenue – the ‘carrier pigeon model’:

In this model you let people share, link to, recommend, search, aggregate, and even reuse your content – you just make sure it’s properly marked up and credited first, so you can keep track of it, and develop revenue models off the back of it. You do this with – excuse the geek terminology – “metadata” (…) I call it the “carrier pigeon” model because the news doesn’t just go out, it comes back.

Full post at this link…

RSS feeds beat any branded iPhone or iPad news app

4 Replies

There are still so many uncertainties in the media landscape. Media fortunes fluctuate upwards due to the green shoots of cyclical recovery and downwards thanks to the continued – and permanent – failure of long-standing print-based publishing models.

But one thing you can be assured of is that in boardroom and management meetings across the worlds of newspapers, magazines and broadcast media, executives are being asked: “What’s our app strategy?”

Still regarded as something of a secret sauce for newspapers and magazines – Rupert Murdoch believes that all media will find its way to the iPad – the very success and survival of newspapers and magazines apparently relies on us iPhone- and iPad-wielding middle class types going on an App Store shopping spree.

I’ve written on these pages before that, much like an English goalkeeper facing a German penalty, the iPad won’t save anything at all – least of all the news business. Analysts at paidContent:UK and Journalism.co.uk agree.

So here’s another thought: despite their convenience, apps are a limited way of publishing information. The self-constructed, community-based, open, Google-able news eco-system gives the serious media consumer a better all-round experience than the closed off system represented by the iPad and App Store, and all it takes is a little effort to make the most of it.

Most apps available now are primitive, quickly-built bits of smartphone software that publish articles via sequential updates. In the main, even market-leading apps don’t begin to present stories, pictures, video and graphics to readers in the way they should.

The experience of using the Guardian and Telegraph apps is only fractionally as rewarding and revealing as using Guardian.co.uk and Telegraph.co.uk – indeed, it’s probably not even as good as those unprofitable paper things. Andrew Sparrow may be the king of political liveblogging, but try reading him on the iPhone app – it’s confusing, jumbled, the links aren’t live and it’s not worth the effort.

Look at Journalism.co.uk’s review of iPhone apps from March: out of 34 leading apps, a measly five allowed offline reading.

So what’s the alternative? Do it yourself, with friends

Since the advent of the iPhone I’ve fallen back in love with RSS. With Google Reader’s mobile version (when in internet range) I can quickly read the 1,000+ feeds I check regularly. When out of range and on the London Underground I use the free NetNewsWire app which syncs seamlessly with Google Reader and works offline beautifully, as does the paid-for Byline app which shows pictures well and partially downloads online-only content too.

But both of those RSS aggregator apps allow me to add articles to my shared items on Google Reader and post things to Twitter. It’s a real-time news diet chosen by me and the community I belong to.

Times Newspapers launched its paid-for products this week and the £2-a-week sites are soon to be tied to access to iPhone/iPad apps, much like the FT’s app. With Times executives openly predicting reader numbers to collapse by as much as 90 percent, News International may be relying on the attractiveness of the iPad apps to shore up subscription numbers. I’ve seen the TheTimes.co.uk app in action on an iPad recently – it’s essentially the day’s online and print news digested into a series of regular “editions” – and the ‘liveness’ possible from online news appears to be lacking, as is the sharing aspect.

Of course, the everyday Man On The Clapham Omnibus doesn’t care or want to know about RSS, much less mobile apps that create a mobile version of their OPML file. But Journalism.co.uk readers are media professionals – and I’d wager that most of you are capable of using free or cheap software to create a mobile news experience that no branded premium app can match.

Comment: Reaction to the new Times and Sunday Times websites

1 Reply

Having had a day to “browse and snack” on the new Sunday Times and Times websites, what’s the feedback so far? What’s the reaction to the new editorial layout, multimedia changes and approach to journalism behind a paywall?

Starting with those bloggers who were given a sneak preview of the sites the night before they went live:

Malcolm Coles on the Times:

Without the need to chase search engine traffic or page views for advertisers, the idea of covering fewer stories but in a better way sounds appealing (…) an article, for instance, with an information graphic and tabs to let you explore the history and different aspects of the story without leaving the page. This package of content is brilliant – it works much better as an experience than lists of related articles or auto-generated tag pages.

But, asks Coles, shouldn’t readers be allowed to subscribe to just one site with completely distinct sections and topics?

It strikes me that there is either sufficient distinction in the audience for the two brands that you let users subscribe to just one site; or the audiences cross over so much that you combine the two sites in one and think about what makes most sense from the user’s point of view.

Forcing people to subscribe to both sites but keeping them entirely separate, with no cross-linking, seems a bit odd.

Adam Westbrook on the experience of reading the Times and Sunday Times online:

Well, at first impressions I am not bowled over: black text on a white screen, size 12, serif font – just like every other news website out there (and even this blog!). A web page can be any colour and fully dynamic – a concept no major newsroom is yet to grasp.

Rory Cellan-Jones on how a smaller audience might offer a more engaged readership:

[T]he company is convinced that advertisers will find the smaller audience of committed readers more attractive than the 21 million promiscuous passers-by who flit through the free Times Online site each month at present. While there’s been plenty of sniping from the sidelines by News International’s rivals, I suspect they are all glad that someone is at least testing the waters.

Tim Fenton:

It’s a slick package, although whether well-bundled, good content is enough of a differentiator from everything on Google News remains to be seen. For me, the biggest surprise is that the Times is not planning a splashy ad campaign to launch the paywall – it is relying chiefly on promotion in the newspaper.

It’s a low-key – and very analogue – start to one of the biggest experiments in modern digital media.

Of those reviewing the sites today, TechCrunch Europe expands on concerns raised that the papers’ journalists will miss out on social media conversation around their work, with thoughts on what the paywall means for mobile and ecommerce developments:

I don’t know The Times’ development roadmap, but if it does not have an API for its content (I presume it won’t since the whole of the new sites will be paywalled and invisible to search engines) then there will be no opportunity to catch the Third Wave of social or indeed of mobile or commerce. The Times cannot possibly come up with all the ideas which will happen in the Third Wave, which is why third-party developers will be so important.

Will the Times and Sunday Times be taking themselves out of the social media conversation with paywalls that redirect deep links to a generic login page? (Interesting to note findings from a Pew Research Center study, which report that bloggers will share more links and stories produced by mainstream news organisations, Twitterers less so, suggesting there’s is still a reliance of the social media news world on traditional news outlets. Interesting also – digital director of Mirror Group Matt Kelly’s remarks last week about the importance of honing news sites to niches that their readers identify as the values of that particular paper or brand.)

Adam Tinworth provides food for thought on the issue with his post on the potential impact of a subscription wall on a site’s community:

People sharing what they think will be identifiable, and they will have paid an entrance fee to get in there. This is, in fact, a community model, just one that differs from the wide, inter-connected community model we’re used to on the open web.

I recall Lee Bryant saying at last year’s Social Media Influence conference that sometimes its the wall that defines the community. And that maxim will be tested on these sites.

Times and Sunday Times get new websites as Alton gets new job

1 Reply

We gave you a sneak preview of the Times’ new design a couple of weeks ago, but the new websites for The Times and Sunday Times have gone live today.

At the moment the homepage of each site is the only part freely available. Readers will have to sign up for an initial free trial, before a paywall comes down on both sites (£1 a day or £2 a week for access) in four weeks time.

Journalism.co.uk was given a talk through of the new site designs by their editorial teams last night, so we’ll be posting more details later, but for now see the homepages below or visit the sites which you can read about at this link.

Meanwhile former Observer and Independent editor Roger Alton is joining the Times as executive editor, according to this report from MediaGuardian.

Continue reading →

FT.com gets go ahead for iPad app

Wall Street Journal: New York Times to start charging for online in January

paidContent:UK: What is News Corp’s new ‘innovative’ subscription plan?

Comment: Tension mounts in Johnston Press newsrooms

4 Replies

Unless Johnston Press executives do something quickly, internal pressure could rival Eyjafjallajokull’s. Week after week the resentment bubbles up. A summary of recent events, according to the National Union of Journalists and previous reports:

The company’s executives received juicy bonus packages while its staff endured (and continue to endure) an ongoing pay freeze.

JP staff stuck abroad due to the ash cloud were asked to take it out of their holiday allowance, or as unpaid leave.

Johnston Press journalists in Scarborough voted in favour of industrial action, and last Friday (30 April) took to the streets for the first strike in over 30 years at the Scarborough Evening News, Whitby Gazette, and Mercury.

On the same day NUJ members attended the Edinburgh shareholders’ meeting, asking the board “questions about executive pay, staff morale and the pressures on journalists to continue to produce quality newspapers in the face of 12 per cent staff cuts, a pay freeze and inadequate training on the Atex editorial production system.” (NUJ May 2010)

Across the group, there was a 70 per cent vote by NUJ members for industrial action “to combat job losses and increased levels of stress and workload caused by the introduction of the Atex content magagement system,” according to the NUJ.

New content management system, Atex, is causing embarrassment for its journalists, resulting in misaligned pictures, or even missing pictures. They have difficulties with formatting the content properly.

Jon Slattery hosts a candid and sensibly anonymous account from a Leeds-based Johnston Press journalist this week:

Here in Leeds, on the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Evening Post, we have been waiting for months now to be told we are going Atex – i.e. replacing subs with templates for reporters to fill. We have heard from smaller centres all over the group what is likely to happen. It started to get close when we heard Scarborough subs had been “offered” redeployment to Sheffield – a two-hour drive on a good day.

Much of a recent NUJ meeting agenda was taken up by Northern divisional manager, Chris Green, says the anonymous correspondent. He adds:

We have seen a lot of nice suits pass through this place and walk away with pockets bulging, leaving the papers thinner and crappier.

JP’s recent strategy would suggest that the ‘suits’ aren’t really prioritising the web, after its failed pay wall trial – with reports of very (very) few subscribers. Journalists aren’t even asking for that much. Slattery’s man on the ground says:

…I do not want to make a stand for standards in journalism. I want to make the best of a bad job. I am not even sure I want to make a stand for strict demarcation between subs and reporters. But however you carve it up, somebody has to do the bloody work…

Alan Rusbridger on his vision for a ‘mutualised newspaper’ (video)

6 Replies

Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, recently appeared on the Charlie Rose show, now available online.

Asked about free versus paid content and newspapers, Rusbridger talked about a future of collaboration rather than competition.

The collaborative possibilities of the web are the interesting ones, he said, citing how the Guardian invited external environmental websites to sit on its site.

Rusbridger, who has spoken out against pay walls in the past, talked about his vision of a “mutualised newspaper”.

“We have to get over this journalistic arrogance that journalists are the only people who are the figures of authority in the world,” he said. Using the example of theatre coverage, he said you didn’t need to get rid of the critics, but you could invite other members of the audience in.

“If you can open your site up, and allow other voices in, you get something that’s more engaged, more involved – and actually, I think, journalistically better.”

Full clip at this link…

Editors Blog | Journalism.co.uk

Online journalism news