The paywalls are coming

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NZtechfreak

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#1041427 10-May-2014 17:57

blakamin: It's amazing the amount of paywalls that fail. Big papers in the US & UK can get away with it, but they actually have "journalists".
Then you have sites like "stfu" oops ..."Stuff" and "NZ Herald" who just copy/paste from any affiliated site. I predict this dying a quick death.

Personally, I'd rather scroll by some ads than pay for their drivel.

There is at least one amazing example of a paywall succeeding too - a subscription only publication in France. All investigative journalism all the time. Especially needed in France where there is no equivalent to the official information act. I'd pay for proper hard news, in fact is leap at the chance to pay for that kind of quality.

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old3eyes

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#1041452 10-May-2014 18:49

Technofreak:
KiwiNZ: Before electronic media we paid for news inclusive of Advertising, it was called the Newspaper subscription or cover charge. It kinda baffles me that many think just because its on the interwebz it should be free.

Does anyone really think a newspaper subscription paid the wages of the reporters? It probably barely covers the delivery and cost of the paper it's printed on. There's plenty of free community papers in the market place that survive on advertising alone.

There's no delivery cost or paper cost on the web. Sure there's a cost to running the website but there is no printing press needed to print the content so I'd say swings and round a bouts there so far as costs go, The content is being created whether or not it goes on the website or into a physical paper so swings and round a bouts again.

With the standard of reporting we get with most news sites and I definitely include NZHerald and Stuff in this group there's no way I'd bother with paying for access.

Add the NZ TV news media to that..

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Old3eyes

gzt

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#1041483 10-May-2014 20:35

Most attempted solutions have gone like this:

1. Start with existing product.
3. Add paywall.
4. Fail.

Doh! What went wrong? At the very least missed secret sauce at step 2.

JimmyH

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#1041488 10-May-2014 21:04

A paywall can work, and work well, for publications with something genuine to offer and a reader base that values what they have to offer. The Economist and the Financial Times are in that category. The NZ Herald and Stuff, in my opinion, aren't.

mattwnz

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#1041526 10-May-2014 22:36

The NBR in NZ is largely behind a paywall. But not sure how many subscribers they have got. Businesses are often prepared to pay for that sort of thing as it can be a business expense.

Dratsab

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#1041533 10-May-2014 23:05

alasta:
: I wonder if the bean counters at TVNZ and Mediaworks are trying to figure out how to make the 6.00PM news go behind a paywall ... Wait Kill it on FTA and only have it on Sky..

Free to air broadcasters must be bleeding revenue as a result of people using PVRs to skip ads, pirating TV shows from overseas, and simply turning the TV off in favour of other online media. I wouldn't be surprised to see them radically change their business model over the coming years.

They're certainly not doing themselves any favours by limiting their on demand apps to a select few devices either.

JimmyH:A paywall can work, and work well, for publications with something genuine to offer and a reader base that values what they have to offer. The Economist and the Financial Times are in that category. The NZ Herald and Stuff, in my opinion, aren't.

For the average punter it's probably quite a different story...

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Geektastic

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#1041549 10-May-2014 23:58

JimmyH: I would pay for decent content and news. That means I could probably be persuaded to pay for the Telegraph, and I already have access to the paid version of the Financial Times. Both of these are excellent.

Stuff and the Herald, on the other hand, are a total joke. Virtually no news, a welter of useless "human interest" pap and opinions from nobodies, and content scooped up cheaply on syndication that is days out of date. "All blacks cat has Kidney Stone" is the level of story they consider news.

I rarely bother with them for free. They now expect me to pay for access - you have got to be joking!

Brings back happy memories of my youth and the infamous "World War II Bomber Found On The Moon" headline from the Sunday Sport! Ahhh....1988! How I miss you.

MikeAqua

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#1042332 12-May-2014 14:15

An interesting effects of internet new has been a shift in emphasis from accuracy to immediacy. There seems to be less interest in verification of facts, than in getting a story online.

A classic example was following a fatal shark attack last year where one new website changed it's article several times because it had repeatedly published unconfirmed rumour and speculation as fact, most of which proved incorrect. But hey as long as they got it out here fast ...

I wouldn't pay for Stuff, or the Herald. They aren't good enough.

Mike

SaltyNZ

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#1042408 12-May-2014 15:48

Here's a sample of the quality you can expect for your hard-earned cash:

The nature of electoral politics is that politicians are mostly reluctant to start throwinges directed back at them. But once the peace is broken, then a quick escalation in dirty warfare tends to occur.

For the best overview of this trend, seg around strong allegations for fear that they will then be subject to similar chare Anthony Hubbard's feature article The politics of 'sleaze'.

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jonathan18

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#1042419 12-May-2014 16:03

SaltyNZ: Here's a sample of the quality you can expect for your hard-earned cash:

The nature of electoral politics is that politicians are mostly reluctant to start throwinges directed back at them. But once the peace is broken, then a quick escalation in dirty warfare tends to occur.

For the best overview of this trend, seg around strong allegations for fear that they will then be subject to similar chare Anthony Hubbard's feature article The politics of 'sleaze'.

Yeah, I spotted that this morning - I even refreshed the screen quite some time later to see if they'd fixed those errors! I've emailed both Stuff and NZ Herald more than once about the quality of their proof reading - never heard back, of course. I'd agree that, if we are required to pay for content, the least we should be able to expect is an acceptable standard of writing.

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