End of a free press in Ireland?
April 13, 2010 at 1:54 pm 1 comment
Yesterday I was reading a very interesting article published in The Sunday Business Post.
According to this article, the days of free online news are over. Do you believe that? Publishers have been unsure about the best model for online versions of their publications. Online advertising never covered the cost of editions, so newspapers in Ireland and overseas are starting to charge for their sites. This summer The Times and The Sunday Times will start to charge to read their online articles. They won’t have their news on the Google search engine any more. They urged newspaper to “stand up” to Google and let the search site gather its own news. Others newspapers such as The Irish Times, Independent Newspapers and The Sunday Business Post, are now looking at charging for content.
I think that many could be a barrier to the internet and very few people will pay. However, if you live abroad and want to read news about your country, you might accept to pay for this. But looking at the perspective of generating revenue from online news, I think that this approach is a good solution to keep the newspapers doing well in their business. Online newspapers have high cost as much as printed newspapers. They have to pay journalists, web-designers, programmers and so on. Business is business. The Web has changed the business model for many industries. And each one will need to adapt to this digital world.
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Conall | April 15, 2010 at 10:52 am
From my point of view, until there is absolutely no way of getting news online for free, I wouldn’t pay for it.
These subscription models that some agencies are using are akin to fish flapping out of water. If all but one site has premium content, then that one site is going to have an awful lot of traffic and will most likely find a way to turn it into profit.
The market is definitely changing, and people have already got a taste for free content which is going to be extremely hard to change. In Ireland for example, RTE would probably be the last to charge for their content, and I don’t see them doing it. Neither would the BBC in the UK.
In the end, to choose to subscribe to one news agency, is effectively subscribing to a point of view, not to a source of information. The information will still get through. If nowhere else, then on twitter.
All that’s not to say it’s fair that people should get free content; it’s just the way it has unfolded with the internet.