Get 'em out for the... readers: The Sun scraps its online paywall Rupert Murdoch's flagship British tabloid, The Sun, is to abandon its paywall in search of greater web traffic as it seeks to compete with big online news hitters such as the Daily Mail. According to the Guardian, the move was set to be officially announced on Friday and implemented by the end of November. Back in July 2013, …
disappointing that I still can't read Private Eye (with a subscription) online.
I thought the physical presentation of Eye was part of the core proposition. Like you, I am a man of high literature, although my preference is Viz. That too suffers from the same challenge of the paper copy being the real McCoy, and the screen version not quite making the grade.
> I thought the physical presentation of Eye was part of the core proposition.
Indeed but I don't subscribe because I move around a lot (contracting) so it would be nice to be able to catch up on what I've missed online.
Anyway, the medium is a challenge for a designer. Not me, I don't do design. But a designer. A good one, preferably.
On a side note, the BBC is running this story and it links to an article reporting it in the FT, which by hilarious irony is itself behind a paywall so you can't read it.
BBC story
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-34679817
FT link
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/dbc792ee-7efc-11e5-98fb-5a6d4728f74e.html#axzz3q3tfyRCp
Scandalous indeed that not enough people are willing to pay for their own brainwashing!
I mean, they pay to have their hair washed too, no?
they willingly pay for all sorts of minor services...
But getting their brain washed isn't worth some cash to them?
Poor mainstream media. I guess you'll need to go asking for money at your annual Bilderberger meeting. No worries, they're extremely well financed and they rely on you distorting everything and keeping people's minds on one fool's errand after another.
Reduced supply is what happens when you invoice your suppliers to deliver to your warehouse.
Is there third-party advertising? Then you are not the customer.
In the physical realm I suspect prices work because you don't go out to buy the Sun, you get a pack of cigarettes and it almost comes free with them.
As for the proxy-log popularity of the Mail, could it be due to their infinite length webpages skewing the results?
Seem to remember Murdoch's real gripe was that with the BBC providing so much internet news content for free that his rag couldn't compete.
I guess he thinks its going to be OK now that he has successfully paid the Tory party enough to castrate the BBC...
I noticed though a little while back that my proxy logs showed quite a change in the most popular news website and that now the Daily Mail website is by far the most hit from our large organisation.... It surprised me somewhat and since then I have been rather concerned about the obvious brain drain going on here as everyone sups from the fountain of the Daily Heil.
Then again, looking at the state of the company, it figures...
"....as everyone sups from the fountain of the Daily Heil."
We reached out (#) to the Daily Fail for their response to this alleged slight on their character. Their spokesman- a Mr H Harmsworth- responded "Hurrah for the blackshirts!" (##)
(#) Can anyone please explain why this horrid PR-esque phrase seems to be replacing "contacted" or "attempted to contact" in everyday use? I've seen people- rather unconvincingly- try to argue that it's not exactly the same thing, but it just sounds like fake-touchy-feely BS to me. Understandable coming from PR weasels, less so from supposedly impartial journalists.
(##) Yeah, I know, don't care... "The Daily Express was worse" isn't saying much ;-P
"The Daily Telegraph has a wall too, but it takes about 3 seconds to bypass it."
The DT subscription is now being touted for £12 rather than the previous £6. As long as the BBC, Independent, and Grauniad are not behind paywalls then the DT no longer has enough broadsheet gravitas to be worth coin of the realm.
Unfortunately the Independent has gone for a style change that crams a page full of pictures and article headers that is just too much. Looks and loads even worse than the re-styled Grauniad.
Well the DT is normally read by the over 75s.
Maybe the silver surfers are Internet savvy enough to pull out their wallets and pay the £12 ('hey, what's £12, we've never had it so good. My pension's going up at least 2.5% again'), but not tech savvy enough to understand how to get round it.
So I'd give the DT another 10 years or so before their cash-cow-audience dies off.
the Independent ........ Looks and loads even worse than the re-styled Grauniad.
That, Sir, is not possible. The Graun has degenerated into a sort of amateur-curated news aggregating blog (although I don't mind, if that's what they want to do with it).
The Indy is a far more painful loss. Remember at launch, it was a fresh voice, a broadsheet with gravitas and indeed an independent voice. Now it's just another shitty tabloid, owned by a Russian oligarch.
GCSE Statistics Paper Question
A "quality" newspaper recently asserted that: in 2013 another "newspaper" had 30 million audited users per month. But today, that "newspaper" now has 1 million readers per day.
Please tick one only one answer:
* The "newspaper" has 96% fewer readers today than in 2013.
* The "newspaper" has roughly the same number of readers per day.
* The "Grauniad" has a maths problem as well as all the others it's famous for.
"The "Grauniad" has a maths problem as well as all the others it's famous for."
It isn't a particularly great bit of reporting on their part, but since the Sun is behind a paywall, we can be reasonably sure that the million people today are the same million people tomorrow. So the unique monthly visitors are going to be roughly a million. So the writing is terrible, but the point is largely accurate.
To be fair, the standard of writing & more importantly reporting in all newspapers is absurdly low compared to historical norms. Look at a historic newspaper from a hundred years ago and see the difference. It's profoundly shocking, and frankly I think that they all deserve to go out of business given how poor the reporting is.
Too true. I've lost count of the number of basic schoolboy English errors I've spotted in even the supposedly high-brow broadsheet newspapers; confusion between 'there', 'they're' and 'their', confusion between 'your' and 'you're', 'drawers' spelt as 'draws', 'brakes' spelt as 'breaks', greengrocers' apostrophes... and so on.
And that's before you even consider the mangled sentence structure, which often makes headlines read as jokes, or the fact that most journalists writing today [El Reg's included] seem unable to find the preference which sets their spell-checker language to UK English and, consequently, churn out prose in a mixture of American and UK English —often spelling the same word both ways, in the same paragraph.
"Look at a historic newspaper from a hundred years ago and see the difference."
Yeah, funny that. A 100 years ago newspapers were cheap and they had a huge staff, reporters all over the place, copy editors, sub editors, proof readers and a budget for proper investigative journalism. In some cases they made huge profits for their owners too. You'd almost think there was no competition for news reporting back then.
The point about spell checkers, language selection and grammar checkers is well taken though.
Lets hope they don't un-paywall The Times - it's the only newspaper where the comments are civil and informed, because the cost keeps the extremists out ( although lots of lefties seemed to infiltrate during the Labour leadership election and haven't left yet, but I'm sure they will eventually ).
How's the Guardian doing on website popularity?
Does it still have a better ratio of website viewers to paper circulation than the bigger circulation tabloids? Can't find anything on subject since 2011 when it was up there with MailOnline although its paper sales were about 1/10 those of Daily Mail.
September figures here:
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/website-abcs-metro-freefall-sun-drops-below-express-mirror-blames-jennifer-lawrence-no-yearly-growth
BUT... You have to take the "daily users" figure with a huge pinch of salt...
Little known fact that the figure includes use of the various newspapers apps - which pull down content automatically even if that content is not read. Thus if you've downloaded, say, the Daily Mail app on your mobile device, even if you've never used it, it will still be downloading content and still counting you (or your device) in their figures.
Here you go, funnily enough from a page on the Guardian's website:
http://www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-office/2015/feb/19/guardian-reports-record-traffic-to-start-2015
Basically,
Monthly unique browsers 121,733,045
Monthly page views:762.8M
Daily average unique browsers:7M
By comparison, the paper Guardian is about 185k copies per day, the Sun is just under 2 million.
The really interesting thing with newspaper actual paper circulation vs their websites is that the websites are more popular because of two factors:
1) Printed stuff is like old hat dude
2) The websites are free - not just the paper's own websites but if not that particular one, then any of hundreds others. Free is the best price for a consumer and price is king even at the cost of service quality (that price is king is well known in the IT world, few ever pay for quality!)
The really interesting thing with newspaper actual paper circulation vs their websites is that the websites are more popular because of two factors:
Don't forget international reach. I suspect that the browser stats include a heck of a lot of international traffic from Oz and the US, to judge by both the content that the Graun hosts and some of the comments.
"[...] from Oz and the US, to judge by both the content that the Graun hosts and some of the comments.[...]
Any article in the Grauniad, Indy, or DT on improving sex education, gender equality, or stopping religious interference in lawmaking is guaranteed to attract many negative and often vitriolic comments from people in the USA. It's almost as if there is an organised lobby trying to influence British society in those areas.
At least the Guardian still knocks out the free top quality crosswords (Azed, Everyman, and all the daily puzzles, plus a lot more). That is pretty good in today's Internet world:
If they take it down today, they have to refund all the subscriptions, take it down next month and they can collect next month's subscription up to the day the wall comes down. Processing all the refunds, putting negative sales figures on the MOSS return and trying to get VAT refunds from all the EU countries they sell to would be a major hassle.
"On an IT angle, why is "taking down the paywall" going to take so long?"
From a strictly IT angle they'll have to test any changes properly.
From a business point of view, do they for example combine subscriptions to the Sun and their other publications into one monthly fee? If so, there are no doubt IT changes to be tested properly before implementation.
Standard change management as far as that goes. If I were a subscriber I'd be watching my monthly statements very carefully indeed to ensure they don't simply carry on charging when they shouldn't.
Okay, so many people disagree with his politics, as do I on the whole, but Britain has lots of newspapers, representing a range of viewpoints, so there is something for all tastes. Many people do agree with the Sun's political stance (unless you really believe the public are so daft that they let newspapers tell them what to think) and voluntarily spend their hard-earned money on buying it. I find it difficult to object to that.
Murdoch has kept lossmaking papers going (I heard the Times was losing £30m a year not so long ago) that might have otherwise shut (or been taken over by another yet-sleazier billionaire, equally as unlikely to be sympathetic to lefty causes, and maybe, God forbid, Russian). Many of the worst behaviour the Murdoch papers are accused of (e.g. listening to people's voicemail) were also done by Mirror Group papers, and the absolute worst offences (deleting messages on Milly Dowler's phone after she disappeared) turned out not actually to have happened. If News International phone hacking had revealed Jimmy Savile's crimes back in 2001, would we all feel so aggreived about it now?
> Many people do agree with the Sun's political stance (unless you really believe the public are so daft that they let newspapers tell them what to think) and voluntarily spend their hard-earned money on buying it. I find it difficult to object to that.
Many more want something they can gain all content from during a ten minute bog break - the Sun serves this purpose perfectly. It also has the sports pages. If it didn't, it wouldn't sell at all.
"but Britain has lots of newspapers, representing a range of viewpoints"
Does it?
There may be quite a few with varying degrees of right wing neo-con views, but all viewpoints left are much less than 'lots'. I'm having difficulty getting the count of left wing, mainstream newspapers above one, maybe two if I count the Morning Star.
"Does it?
There may be quite a few with varying degrees of right wing neo-con views, but all viewpoints left are much less than 'lots'. I'm having difficulty getting the count of left wing, mainstream newspapers above one, maybe two if I count the Morning Star."
I can think of no country of Britain's size with anywhere near as many daily national newspapers. The Mirror, Guardian and Independent are generally left-of-centre. Several others are politically very balanced: the Financial Times publishes a range of opinion and can be surprisingly left-wing in its editorials (Noam Chomsky himself has said you are best advised to go to the business press for proper unbiased reporting). Metro is very balanced indeed in its opinion sections like the letters pages. There are lefty weeklies (e.g. New Statesman). And behind it all sits the scrupulously-unbiased BBC which keeps everyone else honest.
There seems plenty of choice to me.
"And behind it all sits the scrupulously-unbiased BBC which keeps everyone else honest."
I just nearly choked on my G & T reading that absolute howler. You owe me a new laptop keyboard and screen as a result
BBC.....bunch of left wing money grabbing effete intellectual pansies
"Many people do agree with the Sun's political stance"
You flatter it. The Sun does not have a political stance. It has a "what's best for News International" stance. Everything beyond that is just dressing to sell it to the readers.
"If News International phone hacking had revealed Jimmy Savile's crimes back in 2001, would we all feel so aggreived about it now?"
Are you suggesting that mobile phone hacking would have been seen as ok, or maybe just a bit naughty, if it had brought to light Savile's activities, which it didn't, cos "peedo!" trumps all? That's perilously close to the "if you have nothing to hide" argument, just with added "think of the children!"
I am not defending phone hacking. I think evesdropping on celebrity tittle tattle is pathetic, and those who infringe those people's privacy should be prepared to face punishment. But there must be some situations where journos listening to voicemail messages, whilst illegal, would have been in the public interest, and where that would be a legitimate defence in any prosection? Lets say it revealed a government minister or general took a £1m bung in a defence procurement? Or lets say it meant Savile had been put in prison fifteen years ago. Clearly any journalist using a public interest defence would have to have behaved responsibly; they can't start messing round in crimes that the police are investigating. But that the British tabloids could not find the truth about Savile while he was alive, despite all the evidence out there, does not indicate to me a press that is out of control.
Personally, among the reasons I despise that evil, wrinkled testicle of a man are:
1. Margaret Thatcher.
The deal was that she relaxed laws governing monopoly in the media in exchange for him printing only favourable stories about the tories. This alone would make him first up against the wall if I were in charge of the revolution.
2. The same slimeball approach to corporate taxation as the other slimeballs.
3. I have to pay if I want to watch cricket (and some of the F1) live.
I am not sure he is "hated" all that widely: the left-wing commentariat make a disproportionate noise.
However, I for one for dislike his empire: I think it is bad for our democracy when one man has so much power over so many eyeballs in print, online and on TV.
I am not sure he is "hated" all that widely: the left-wing commentariat make a disproportionate noise.
Don't be so judgmental! As somebody far enough to the right to despise David Cameron as a ghastly plutocratic liberal, could I (again) put on record that I hate Turdoch?
And not just the wrinkly old scrote himself, but his ghastly offspring, and his ghastly editorial and management staff.
why is Murdoch hated?
1) for dominating so much of the western press (especially the english language press) that he has the ability to dominate, browbeat and bully governments into following his orders
2) by the insidious insertion of himself and his staff into close relationships with our politicians - for instance see the links between Rebekah Brooks and Cameron
3) Simply for removing so much content from free to view TV to premium content channels, especially sport so depriving the average viewer of a large part of watchable TV
4) For the way Sky has encouraged the separation from reality of TV stars and professional athletes by creating artificial pay scales which turn unskilled nonentities into highly paid arrogant twats
5) For forcing up the entry costs of sports events to the point where a football match is close to unaffordable. Sky has created such a false sense of elevated value among professional sportsmen that even the mediocre expect phenomenal salaries and appearance fees.
6) For encouraging the development of so much low quality tat on TV - the brain-numbing advertising and sex channels, the "reality" crapshows, which distract viewers from reality
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"Fans of the racy Page 3 feature will probably be disappointed to learn that Lucy from Daventry and her skimpily clad pals will be placed on an entirely separate website. In the interests of accurate reporting, your correspondent visited said website and can confirm that, at the time of writing, you still have to hand over your hard-earned beer tokens to see something you can easily get with 10 seconds spent on Google image search."
I for one am glad that El Reg dosn't shy away from hard-hitting, devil-may-care investigative journalism and go the extra mile to dig out the relevant news for it's readers, even at great personal risk. Have a pint.
BTW: link works (had to scale down NoScript in order to see anything), but no sign of a paywall.
I take that the "hero" image is our intrepid reporter, the hard nosed, hard bitten, dyed in the wool journalist who just can't quite get the hang of this new fangled computery stuff yet. Can't you get the YTS boy to help you speed up your searches? 10 whole seconds to find soft core core porn? Pah!
"10 whole seconds to find soft core core porn? Pah!"
You've got it wrong.
You may be after instant gratification, but a proper reporter has to verify his sources, for example by following the links to check that they do indeed contain what their descriptions purport to offer.
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