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by Nekojoe
5702 days ago
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The difference is that the Times and Sunday Times are aimed at the public. There's plenty of competition and free on-line quality alternatives in the UK from the BBC News Website and the Guardian. What I'm interested to see is how other sites traffic went up as people left the Times site as the pay wall was put up. I'll bet the type of news you're willing to pay for isn't aimed at the general public. I reckon sites that will do well behind a paywall are either specialist sites or industry specific sites or even sites that offer time sensitive information first. The kind of sites that either offer quality information or hold a monopoly on this information. They also won't price this for the general public they'll price it for the corporations. |
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I can give you a single data point - I used to read The Times online most days, not generally very much. I'd skip to the letters to sample the public mood, pick the top stories and view the World and UK front pages. I have missed it, but I can't afford to pay, i.e. it's not a high enough priority to warrant the money (but I'm an outlier with respect to payment power).
I use Google News now, kinda. It doesn't really hit the mark, I do occasionally look at other papers - Guardian, Telegraph, Mail (rarely), Independent - but generally I'm relying on social sites to get news. I miss The Times, I grew up reading it, but Google News is OK along with one of the other broadsheets.
The BBC bias always annoys me. I expect commercial interests to have, well, commercial interests but somehow the BBC never really hits the mark. I do read news there about once a fortnight and find their news reviews to be very thorough.