Herald figures believable?

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mattwnz

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#825285 25-May-2013 18:27

Anything can be spun to look good, with the right wording and marketing.

richms

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#825298 25-May-2013 19:01

I expect that it will just drive people to swap articles of interest over other means, and remove all the add revenue they get from people clicking thru to other articles that show in the related articles links etc.

Richard rich.ms

JimmyH

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#825300 25-May-2013 19:11

I read the herald and Dompost (either online or dead-tree) less and less frequently these days. This is mainly because the quality/content has dropped away, but also because of the ads - half the print versions seems to be ads, and the online offerings have annoying intrusive bouncing animated flash ads etc. I don't even bother with the freebie copies on the lunch table at work much now. It used to be "skim the paper while I eat my sandwiches", not I would run out of paper before I finish eating. The NZ papers now seem to feature:

- Abysmal and minimal local news content

- What passes for local content seems to be simply regurgitating marketing press releases and whiny "opinion" columns rather than actual news, and

- Very poor world content. And what there is of this seems to be re-prints from overssea sources that is out-of-date, and I read online as much as three days prior.

For actual news I typically go to good online sources, such as the Telegraph, Radio NZ, the BBC, the Economist and the Washington Post. For local financial information the NZX website and commentaries the banks put put out are more useful than the regurgitation of press releases that passes as "analysis" in the papers nowadays. If they paywall the Herald and Stuff, I probably won't bother visiting them at all. If I'm going to pay at some point, it will be for some of these excellent sources rather than the pitiful excuse for news that the two local outfits pump out now.

In summary. Not entirely unexpected, and I couldn't care less as the quality of these outfits has sunk so low that whether I have access to their content isn't really worth caring about anymore.

1080p

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#825337 25-May-2013 20:23

JimmyH: I read the herald and Dompost (either online or dead-tree) less and less frequently these days. This is mainly because the quality/content has dropped away, but also because of the ads - half the print versions seems to be ads, and the online offerings have annoying intrusive bouncing animated flash ads etc. I don't even bother with the freebie copies on the lunch table at work much now. It used to be "skim the paper while I eat my sandwiches", not I would run out of paper before I finish eating. The NZ papers now seem to feature:

- Abysmal and minimal local news content

- What passes for local content seems to be simply regurgitating marketing press releases and whiny "opinion" columns rather than actual news, and

- Very poor world content. And what there is of this seems to be re-prints from overssea sources that is out-of-date, and I read online as much as three days prior.

For actual news I typically go to good online sources, such as the Telegraph, Radio NZ, the BBC, the Economist and the Washington Post. For local financial information the NZX website and commentaries the banks put put out are more useful than the regurgitation of press releases that passes as "analysis" in the papers nowadays. If they paywall the Herald and Stuff, I probably won't bother visiting them at all. If I'm going to pay at some point, it will be for some of these excellent sources rather than the pitiful excuse for news that the two local outfits pump out now.

In summary. Not entirely unexpected, and I couldn't care less as the quality of these outfits has sunk so low that whether I have access to their content isn't really worth caring about anymore.

I have to agree with many of the points here. The quality of the news reporting produced by these outlets is such that I would simply stop thinking about them if they paywalled.

The number of spelling and grammar errors I notice alone blows me away considering the content is professionally produced and more than likely passed through a spell checker at some point. Do editors even exist anymore?

DravidDavid

1907 posts

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#825575 26-May-2013 14:55

1080p: The number of spelling and grammar errors I notice alone blows me away considering the content is professionally produced and more than likely passed through a spell checker at some point.

I could not agree with you more. I see spelling errors daily especially on Yahoo NZ. Human error is still a factor, but you would think once a story was published and it was online, you could still edit it!

jpoc

1043 posts

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#827216 28-May-2013 17:40

Dunnersfella: Yup, the paywall is coming. And of course, so will the new options offering free services...

Yes, that seems to be the trend but after two bad experiences, I very much doubt that I will sign up.

I subscribed to the Financial Times online edition. They used the roundpoint service and the day's paper was delivered to to my Handspring Visor each morning. So the theory went. At best, they would deliver about one quarter of the editorial and none of the market listings - not even the summaries! Then the service just stopped working for a whole month one summer. I guess that the intern who was running it took a vacation. Neither warning, explanation nor apology was given and I cancelled the subscription.

A few years ago, I paid for the UK Guardian service on my iPhone. It was painfully slow to use and frustratingly hard to navigate and then, after a few weeks, it just stopped working altogether.

Is there anything that the guys on the Herald or at Stuff could do to convince me that they could have an online offering that would not take my money and then fail to deliver? Not a chance. OK, perhaps if it had been running to a rave reception for two years I might reconsider but by then I would most likely have found other ways to satisfy my news hunger.

I have no sympathy for newspapers anyway. They have shot themselves in the foot over their online economics. I always understood that the mark of a successful newspaper was that the price for the paper edition covered printing and distribution costs. Advertising income covered the cost of creating the paper. In that case, surely an online paper would be able to sell enough advertising to cover the production costs and the relatively small extra price to keep the website running. Why is that not the case? Look at the big advertisers in the print edition of your town's paper. Then go search for their ads in the online edition. They are nowhere to be seen. Instead, all that you get is the same old selection of bottom of the barrel garishly flashing ads for financial services and travel. Where are the ads from Briscoes, Harvey Norman, Pak'nSave and the like? I know that all of those guys have their own websites but who looks at them all, every day? If online newpapers got the ads right, they would be rolling in money but instead, they have just shelved it as too hard and they seem to have given up years ago.

andrew027

1286 posts

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#827285 28-May-2013 20:01

mattwnz: Anything can be spun to look good, with the right wording and marketing.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics!

I do almost all my news reading online, a lot of it on Stuff but some other sites too, but I read someone else's hardcopy Dom Post at work, and will continue to do so until the 5 Minute Quiz replaces the stupid multiguess Stuff Daily Trivia quiz online. And until whoever is responsible for publishing the images on the site learns their job so that Dilbert is visible every day, instead of the dreaded "red cross" three days a week.

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Regs

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Snowflake

#827350 28-May-2013 21:28

the printed edition works much better during flights around the country....

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oxnsox

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#827371 28-May-2013 21:39

I thought figures were based on audited print runs.

Jas777

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#827590 29-May-2013 11:05

What I can't understand is those that complain about having advertisements on the online version when it is free. How else do you think they pay their staff wages and running costs?

richms

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#828020 29-May-2013 21:25

Intrusive ad's are the problem, and ones that turn whitespace into a clickable link going somewhere.

Richard rich.ms

JimmyH

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#828029 29-May-2013 21:44

richms: [...] and ones that turn whitespace into a clickable link going somewhere.

I absolutely loathe that! An incredibly rude and annoying thing for sites to do to visitors.

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