The Times and Sunday Times websites to charge from June

[EldonAve]

£1 a day

The Sun & NOTW to follow

Will you pay to read the news online?

It's easier to find what you want with a paper.Sometimes I see an article online and then struggle to remember where it was when I want to look at it again.It frustrates me. I also read stuff in the paper I wouldn't have read online because they have caught my eye.

Yes it is £1 a day, but you can also buy a weeks access for £2, which suddenly seems a lot more sensible.

I'm still not sure that it will really catch on, but will it catch on enough to turn a profit is the question.

Yes you can get the BBC for "free" but people consume media for reasons other than just getting the facts. People don't buy the Sun because they're interested in the news. Rather they want to be entertained and enjoy the "voice" that the Sun has.

So will that sense of brand loyalty last when it's signing up, registering a password and paying for an account rather than just grabbing a copy from a news stand with coins from your pocket I guess is the real question.

no, even if i was an avid reader, still wouldn't pay for it, would just go elsewhere instead.

I wouldn't pay £1 a day, but £2 a week doesn't sound too bad.

I don't get time to read a whole paper during the week so just tend to dip in and out online, but I do like a proper paper on a Sunday, it is part of my routine. I don't feel that reading it on a screen would be the same as sprawling out all of the sections around me, even though The Sunday Times costs the same as a week's access online would.

It's not a surprise, Caitlyn Moran and Giles Coren were talking about it a while ago. It will be interesting to see what the new sites are like before deciding whether to spend my money. The papers are going to have to find a way to pay their journalists somehow if less of us buy print versions.

£2 a day is more reasonable. But I spend too much time on the internet as it is. If I'd paid I'd probably feel that I had to log on to get my money's worth!

forget about the pound a day, they want you to ignore that and go for the £2 per week. and if you subscribe there will be an offer. they will have built this outrage into their plans, fear not.

Ooh hello cornsilk, you made the times yourself last Sunday with your wanting naked photos of Keanu, I spat my coffee all over the paper when I read it. (probably wouldn't have been good if I'd been reading online)

and yy i like the physical too. but with ipads etc i suspect that technology will soon provide that pleasurable physical thing.

ha ha lost in wales! I might well pay if they included some nice Keanu links

i wonder if he's also counting on getting back a lot of sunday times and times readers who currently dip in? people who like a particular columnist might buy the paper from the newsagents? terrifying, all this, but the internet really is killing journalism.

it's really interesting though how the 'physical' object feels worth paying for, but the content online doesn't.

I'm the same as others, I read online in the week and buy the Observer at the weekend - which is why I'm pleased they sorted themselves out, it was getting frighteningly thin and parlous for a while back then.

I also find I read differently on a screen - I whizz, but pay much more concentrated attention to a printed page.

Though this might be generational - perhaps my dc will whizz through everything.

i agree. my eye bounces all over the page online. but they do say they're looking into that.

yes, I wonder if it's possible?

Printed matter somehow feels like it requires concentration. If I've spent too long online, and then I pick up a book - I feel myself having to make the adjustment to CONCENTRATE PROPERLY, for WHOLE paragraphs

I thought what Badgers Paw said was really true.

Also re brand loyalty on the internet - does it exist?

Tim Adams wrote a really interesting piece on how everyone viewed the internet as being horizonless, a vast vista, but in truth people's use of it is entirely circular. I know mine is. I go round and round about six different sites regularly, as a matter of course. It's actually quite annoying. I suppose that is brand loyalty of a kind.

It will be interesting to see the format, I always buy the paper on a friday as I love Caitlin Moran's celebrity watch, it always gives me a giggle and I like the double page layout. Somehow it dosen't seem as satisfying online. I dip in and out online in the week (especially at work as it's one of the only websites I can access there, don't tell IT)

Actually, I would probably buy a subscription for an e-reader type device, but not for normal online screen. And only then if it was sufficiently cheap (which even £2 a week isn't for the amount I would use it - I can barely keep up with free content!)

I like to read the papers online - but wont pay for this. Thought adverts paid well?

god no. first thing to go in a recession, plus a lot of ads have moved online.

I love Caitlin Moran too

Can I just pay her direct?

"I like to read the papers online - but wont pay for this. Thought adverts paid well?"

Advertising revenue is plummeting both online and in print and newspapers rely on that revenue to actually make their money.

So as advertising revenue goes down and circulation figures are also decreasing (which has two effects, the direct decline in circulation revenue and the loss of "value" in the papers adverts as less people read it) you'll see the newspapers trying to find alternate ways of making money.

The London Evening Standard has tried going free.

Murdoch is going with an online subscription.

i bet you any money that when the time comes to launch there will be a subscription for £5-6 per month, then all the other papers will do it, pointing out that the bbc is not free, that you're paying over a hundred and fifty a year for that etc. murdoch got people to pay for sky in the end, that was revolutionary. so long as the other papers follow suit (and there will have been high level conflab about it i'd assume) then it will have a shot.

course it does mean that papers will just be all about opinion and blah blah, but that's another (non) story.

imho - if you have a pay to view internet service it doesn't sit with the way the internet operates. I flit from site to site rather than settling down to read lots online.

If I would be paying I'd get picky about content, layout choice, adverts. I don't have time for this.

I read the papers online every day, dipping in frequently throughout the day.

No way would I pay for it. They are littered with adverts so surely the revenue from that is huge.

What next? Paying for Mumsnet ?

I don't read any papers online! I feel my poor eyes have enough screen time, so I buy and read a proper old fashioned newspaper two or three times a week. And used newspaper is so handy around the house. At the moment I am procrastinating going out to clear up a pile of cat sick up from the patio; how would I do that without newspaper?