It Looks Like the Herald is Going Paywall

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#2228345 1-May-2019 09:11

The obvious possibly next question when is Stuff going the same way ie paywall.

I had a look around the NZHerald site this morning and most of the articles are Premium.Not a lot of free material available.

In the introduction interview with the Editor I think he states that "most" of the content is free. I beg to differ what I am seeing.

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#2228349 1-May-2019 09:18

psychrn:

The obvious possibly next question when is Stuff going the same way ie paywall.

I had a look around the NZHerald site this morning and most of the articles are Premium.Not a lot of free material available.

In the introduction interview with the Editor I think he states that "most" of the content is free. I beg to differ what I am seeing.

Scrolling down it seems that most is free, i.e. not much above 50%, but that's most.

I wonder of they will increase the quality of the free content, to attract subscribers? If it became the bees knees of news websites, they could potentially do quite well. I might be open to that in time. If there was some form of disaster here or elsewhere would that be premium? Is premium "cool" news, or news from premium providers?

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#2228350 1-May-2019 09:19

tdgeek:

We seem to have an obsession with everything needing to be free these days. Stuff is free, others are free as well, enjoy.

I have to say I think you have something of an obsession about commenting on people having an obsession about getting things for free. There is nothing wrong about wanting free things. Obviously, people need to realise that they usually get what they pay for, though I have found that free media content is often better than the paid variety. Naturally that also has to do with the kind of content you want to consume.

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#2228351 1-May-2019 09:21

psychrn:

The obvious possibly next question when is Stuff going the same way ie paywall.

I had a look around the NZHerald site this morning and most of the articles are Premium.Not a lot of free material available.

In the introduction interview with the Editor I think he states that "most" of the content is free. I beg to differ what I am seeing.

I entirely agree. I was actually fairly disappointed at the amount of "premium" content that this there. Almost the entire Rugby section.

$2.50 isn't a huge sum per week, and if they offered it at that for a years subscription, and the content was of a higher quality, I may actually have to eat some crow and get a subscription. I guess the issue is that like Pay TV, things are going to become very fragmented. I don't rate NZH for political stuff, but it's Rugby Coverage is ok. Other sites are better at political stuff, crap for sport.

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#2228352 1-May-2019 09:24

I feel that NZH has something to prove. If it provided a 30 day trial and then in that 30 days could prove the value, I'd consider subscribing, but, right now, it looks like largely the same content written by the same people that has a premium badge on it. That won't do it for me.

So far I have replaced by usual shortcut to the herald in my browser with another site.

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#2228355 1-May-2019 09:27

tdgeek:

...

Earn more income for Herald

...

I expect they have done their analyses and business case, but don't forget there are items on the other side of the ledger with the paywall model:

running and maintaining the paywall - technology support and subscriber admin
do they need to pay more for (or hire) 'better' journalists to generate and provide the premium content
if the quality of the free content decreases does that also decrease demand and prompt their advisers to ask for lower costs

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#2228360 1-May-2019 09:35

floydbloke:

I expect they have done their analyses and business case, but don't forget there are items on the other side of the ledger with the paywall model:

running and maintaining the paywall - technology and subscriber admin
do they need to pay more for (or hire) 'better' journalists to generate and provide the premium content
if the quality of the free content decreases does that also decrease demand and prompt their advisers to ask for lower costs

They don't have journalists anymore from what I've seen. Its just robots scraping news from other sites and where a human is involved, they completely balls up grammar and/or spelling. Or repeat stories from a few months earlier.

NZ print journalism is generally a joke these days, paid or not.

Things need to be researched before being printed, not just searched for others work.

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#2228397 1-May-2019 09:39

networkn:
psychrn:

The obvious possibly next question when is Stuff going the same way ie paywall.

I had a look around the NZHerald site this morning and most of the articles are Premium.Not a lot of free material available.

In the introduction interview with the Editor I think he states that "most" of the content is free. I beg to differ what I am seeing.

I entirely agree. I was actually fairly disappointed at the amount of "premium" content that this there. Almost the entire Rugby section.

$2.50 isn't a huge sum per week, and if they offered it at that for a years subscription, and the content was of a higher quality, I may actually have to eat some crow and get a subscription. I guess the issue is that like Pay TV, things are going to become very fragmented. I don't rate NZH for political stuff, but it's Rugby Coverage is ok. Other sites are better at political stuff, crap for sport.

I think charging is the right way to go, but I agree they have overpriced. $2.50 per week is $125 per year which feels about right for the quality they provide. And especially as they are trying to entice people to pay for what has previously been free.

At $5 per week, the Herald are asking about the same as the UK Guardian for digital membership, yet the Herald falls well behind the Guardian for resources and content quality.

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#2228398 1-May-2019 09:40

floydbloke:

tdgeek:

...

Earn more income for Herald

...

I expect they have done their analyses and business case, but don't forget there are items on the other side of the ledger with the paywall model:

running and maintaining the paywall - technology support and subscriber admin
do they need to pay more for (or hire) 'better' journalists to generate and provide the premium content
if the quality of the free content decreases does that also decrease demand and prompt their advisers to ask for lower costs

Good points

I doubt that operating costs will be much, its just a billing system

They may well, and should pay more for better content. Maybe they can drop some journo's for overseas content, just buy that. Local journo's can do bread and butter free content, but put the suit on when tasked to provide proper, serious, premium content

Back in the day all news was paywall apart from TV. Its just going back to that, but if that can be quite low cost, we might get the benefit of online convenience and paywall quality.

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#2228400 1-May-2019 09:42

And...if they start to complete on quality, I mean ACTUALLY compete on quality, we might see that, and that might cause some of us to pay a few bucks for convenience of not having to filter Kardashians et al

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#2228402 1-May-2019 09:43

Gavin Ellis (former NZ Herald editor; media commentator on RNZ) spoke about the launch of the paywall yesterday - he said they had better sort out the balance between paywalled and free articles on the front page of their site ASAP (he thought it should get sorted that same day), arguing it was far too biased to the latter; he suggested people would indeed move on to other sites and may not return if they continue to find it difficult to find free content to read.

https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018692902/nz-herald-paywall-and-deciphering-house-price-stats

Despite the frequent claims on this site to the contrary, there is excellent content (in reporting, features, investigation, opinion...) both in the Herald print edition and on the website; it's just that they've done an increasingly good job of ensuring it's hard to find on their site (and even more so on their app). This has made the launch of a paywall even riskier, given the misconception they don't produce anything worth reading let alone paying for.

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#2228466 1-May-2019 10:04

I was thinking earlier that with the quality of reporting and editorial being so low these days, will people actually be able to identify the better quality content when they see it now?

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#2228573 1-May-2019 10:58

Used a sign in to view the premium stuff today...have to say that it is massively disappointing to see so much advertising on the site AFTER paying for the access to the articles in question.

If you pay, you shouldn't have advertising...

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#2228584 1-May-2019 11:18

networkn:
I was thinking earlier that with the quality of reporting and editorial being so low these days, will people actually be able to identify the better quality content when they see it now?

For those accustomed to Facebook Newsfeed, probably not.

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#2228590 1-May-2019 11:25

I have been reading a few of the premium articles and they aren't bad but it is hard to say how good they are. The subject matter is interesting and that selection is already a cut above the usual stuff, but the pieces I have seen so far aren't especially in-depth. But maybe they are about right for a newspaper, which shouldn't try to be a magazine. Since I have never been a Herald reader, I can't really make a before/after comparison.

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