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?

I wouldn't. Will stick to Google News, there's enough out there that will not charge, and I get a variety of viewpoints instead of just one.

"I wouldn't. Will stick to Google News"

Well Murdoc's none to happy that Google shows "his" news for free and there have been rumours for a long time that he plans to block Google.

So if his fee charging plan is a success and if other publishers follow suit and then they block Google then Google News will rapidly shrink to next to nothing.

True, but not all will follow suit

Kaloki
I don't doubt for one moment that the other media outlets will start charging for their online news.

And I don't grudge it as they have to earn money to pay their staff somewhere.

Google news or Sky are all very well for a brief overview, but they do not provide deeper insight into the issues.

Although I like the Times, I don't like it enough to pay £365 a yr.

nah
ill read summat else then

I think a pound a day is day light robbery

forget a pound a day, it's a smokescreen so that when it all comes to pass you go, oh it's not so bad really.

i favour a micro-payment scheme, like telephone minutes on a mobile. pay monthly or pay as you go, that would work across all papers.

"i favour a micro-payment scheme, like telephone minutes on a mobile. pay monthly or pay as you go, that would work across all papers."

I've heard it said for years that the lack of a good, safe and easy to use micropayments system is one of the things that's really holding back business on the web.

Imagine if people able to pay 10p or 20p for something was as easy as it was with cash.

i'm sure it will all come, and our kids won't hesitate to pay for stuff. we're in the wild west at the moment.

I think this is really interesting.

Apparently the paper in Whitby (where I used to work) is also going to charge for online.

It has/had a huge number of weekly subscribers from UK/overseas; I suspect they have all switched to online, hitting the paper's profits.

I don't see why it's cheeky really. As others say, newspapers have to make money or make people redundant (like me and DH in the last 12 months).

toccata, "if the paper version costs £1 there's no way the online version can too" - no maybe not (tho the cost of journalists and other staff is by far the biggest), but print media have lost so many readers to the net that maybe they have to get it back some way or another. And yes, as badgerpaws says, revenue from adverts is not huge.

Agree with policywonk tho re not paying Murdoch money in general. And if I am paying £1 then I'll buy the actual paper as I rather like the medium really. In fact wot 100times said (as so often )

Also I was thinking ...

There is such a thing as 'illegal' online file sharing, like if you download music without paying.

If you copied and pasted stuff from the Times and forwarded it without paying (or put up a kind of 'copy' website where people could look at it for free) - would The Times lawyers be after you?

yes they would. there were quite a few websites that created newsfeeds on specialist subjects, for a charge. the papers are shutting them down now for breach of copywright and making money off their backs.

is that how you spell copyright? no. one of them.

"Is it because the paper version is something you can hold in your hands - but the online version isn't, even if the content is the same?"

Some of the industry 'papers' like Computer Weekly are doing an online version where you can view the pages online as well as, or instead of, the paper copy... Handy at the office, no ink to get your hands grubby, and you can leave it in some background browser window for a few minutes read next time your colleagues go out for a smoke - why should they be the only ones to get a 'break' on top of tea/coffee breaks ?

I came across some online service the other week with various monthly magazines. It looks to me that you download a PDF. Possible downside (eg for computer magazines) is that the price is still fairly high, but you will not get any 'freebie' like discount coupons or CD/DVD with the online version.

I'll try to get the right website later - just tried one and it said domain suspended... (just thought how easy it would be to scan a few pages of a few dozen mags, showing first 2-3 and adding a 'page' at the end showing subscription fee, then take thousands of orders at 20 quid, and disappear after 75% of the money has cleared... hmmmm, maybe it was just a scam!)

Interesting. I'm also for pay-per-click. Load up a fiver and pay a few pence per article.

I don't read a whole paper online. The advantage is getting a range of content from different stories, and I've never found an paper's online presence that was easy to read.

I've occasionally flirted with the idea of subscribing to the Guardian's read-as-it-appears-in-print format, but again I don't want to limit myself to one paper online.

It'll be the end of links to stories on here whereas a pay-per-click system would mean links to individual stories would really see them cashing in.

Murdoch's all about world domination though. I can't see NI collaborating with other news providers to provide such a system.

And if he gets his way, the BBC won't be giving us all the stuff "for free" that it does at the moment - cos t'aint fair is it to poor RM

stories sources

"If you copied and pasted stuff from the Times and forwarded it without paying"

in that instance, they'd never know - assuming you forwarded it by e-mail, not putting it online as a posting, or via some message area, such as a FaceBook 'wall' (sorry, I've not touched FB, but know people can leave messages that way)

"(or put up a kind of 'copy' website where people could look at it for free) - would The Times lawyers be after you?"

Almost certainly.

There's been a lot of discussion since last year when News International first announced their plans to charge. Some models allow for the items to be viewed free for a day or two, and then become part of the paper's archive where access needs to be paid for.

Given the online papers still put adverts on, I think a charge of a pound per issue sems steep (if they did away with adverts on the paid-for version, then maybe a pound would be more reasonable). However for some, the adverts are useful (latest deals at Argos or wherever, perhaps), so it's a question for the customer.

Personally, I would not pay that much.

I don't take a daily paper and have bought less than 20 in 10 years or more, just get one infrequently, or pick one up on the bus or train. Only one I planned to buy was the DT special one Saturday with a pull-out about all the MPs' expenses, and even that wasn't compelling enough (given radio coverage on the day) for me to go to the shops.

There have been arguments about the likes of Google copying chunks and making them available via their sites, and I expect that will stop (only by being blocked form access).

NewsNow (a UK firm - see www.NewsNow.co.uk ) only grabs the headlines and they have an online campaign, yet even they have been threatened by law firms for some online papers.

Every few minutes they scan some 30,000 websites and check what new headlines exist, allowing you to get a worldwide snapshot of news, or under different categories (current affairs, politics, technology, etc) or by keyword (free searching limited to 1 word).

I suppose once fees come in, they might get some agreement from news sites to list items (in the past they have shown 'subscription needed') but perhaps they will request a 'cut' for traffic they send, since someone may not know about a pay-site beforehand and will perhaps pay a small fee for a day or article without starting a regular subscription.

I think pay per click might come, but I suspect the consumer price vs the news service wanted price will be quite different.

If you want to promote something on (yuk!) Google AdWords, you, as an advertiser, could be spending anything from 10p to 500p per click and with comparison sites the commission fees can be in tens of pounds (eg 50 quid for insurance, plastic cards, gas/ electric, or loans).

As a consumer, I think we often get ripped off. Look at the original pricing for tracks on Apple iTunes. Wasn't it something like 99c (around 65p) and .89 Euro (again, under 70p) and 99p.

Personally I've previously bought whole CDs on CDWOW and looked on Amazon, but never bought single tracks, and don't touch iTunes, but all too often we get shafted because of company money grabbing policies (giving 1 dollar to the pound, not 1.6/1.8/2.0 to the pound, which have been known in the past 5 years) (though we do also get hit by VAT, or course).

"our kids won't hesitate to pay for stuff. we're in the wild west at the moment."

They may still feel they are being ripped off. Someone mentioned 10p or 20p - I'd pay that for a day's access to a news site.

I'd be happy with some micro-payment scheme where I was paying 1p (or less) per item (so I would not think about copying it, and could happily go back again to check some wording if it was under discussion / dispute).

If it cost me 5p I'd want it sent to me by e-mail without any adverts and be free to read it again and again, and be told it had already been sent to me if I tried to access it again (ie not have to pay twice, if it was 5p).

Yes, feel free to call me a cheapskate if you wish, but as I don't pay 20p or 40p or more for a daily paper (and how many young people do, if they just use online services) then much for news may be completely outside the acceptable cost. Sure, there are dumb text services costing 3 quid a week or whatever (ringtones, softcore porn, perhaps horoscopes, I don't know the full range) but people surely stop those fairly quickly.

Of course, everyone wants to put some charging mechanism into place, but they're waiting to see if it works for Murdoch's papers and if not, they won't bother (or may try a different model, at least).

ahundredtimes - re same old sites you visit - next time you see/ hear some item in the news, do try NewsNow.co.uk (use a keyword that might distinguish items from the story you heard... unfortunately, town/ city names all too often bring up a heap of sports news, so not always the best choices)

CaptainNancy - "I do not pay for BBC, and as most site visitors to BBc are abroad, neither do they."

As I understand it, the BBC website displays adverts for "outside UK" viewers, and blocks some (iPlayer, for example) content.

I suspect that while the "news" section of the BBC won't see great cuts, there might be some sort of change, especially if the BBC Trust is forced to consider income vs expenditure of the website 'news' - it should be quite easy to determine how much the news pages are viewed "in" and "outside" the UK (they get some things wrong, in the case of AOL at some points in the past they considered UK users as being in the USA)

Once the cost of non-UK users is identified, don't be too shocked if they start some subscription mechanism, at least in "industrial" nations, to cover the cost of page delivery (servers, bandwidth) and perhaps even something towards maintenance for the website (staff) and journalism costs too.

Guardian ed Alan Rusbridger memo to staff, as reported by other media, here - talks about Guardian and paywall issue

I wouldn't pay. As it has been said elsewhere when was the last time The Times had an exclusive on anything of any note. It has long ceased to be the quality newspaper it was pre-Murdoch. I enjoy reading a couple of the columnists so it will be interesting to see how that changes. Currently they link from their Twitter and blog pages.

"As it has been said elsewhere when was the last time The Times had an exclusive on anything of any note. It has long ceased to be the quality newspaper it was pre-Murdoch."

Was that back in the 60s when it's front page was still made up of adverts?

Or was it the 70s when the paper had such trouble with the unions that it went out of print for a year and was unable to move from printing technology of the previous century?

I'm no fan of Murdoch but it's got to be said that had he not bought the paper it probably would have disappeared.

Well I can't remember the last time the Times made the news for good investigative journalism and I'm quite old! I can't see why people would pay for news that they can read for free elsewhere.

webdude- I am in UK... I don't pay for BBC because I don't pay a licence fee as I do not watch television, though I appreciate not many people are in my position. It is true that iplayer isn't useable from outside the UK.