Newspapers
9 May 2014
Nobody buys them any more.
This is not a surprise, as online content has been freely available online for quite a number of years now, and aside from the dead trees required to print the crap they carry, it's a lot easier to browse articles online and ignore those of no interest.
The New York Times has long been considered the leading newspaper on the planet, and only 30 years ago, had a daily circulation around 5,000,000. Since 2000, circulations have collapsed, as evinced by the share prices of newspaper companies dropping by up to 90%.
The NZ Herald, for instance, was a blue chip share 30 years ago, with prices during the 1980s rising to a peak around $11 a share. Compare that with the present price of a miserly $0-80c for shares that not only own NZH, but also a raft of radio stations.
The NZ Herald has just appointed a new CEO, and her first task is apparently to institute a paywall to try to get people to pay for reading the paper. Based on overseas examples, we can expect NZH to allow 5-10 articles to be read for free each month, and to access more will cost $10-$30 a month.
There are always easy work-arounds for newspaper paywalls, and I will be recording them here as soon as the Herald's is in place, because I do not accept that people should pay to read online content. The same news is available from free sources, and if the Herald (and others) cannot structure their businesses to run on ad revenue, then they should find a new job.
A classic examples of what I mean is The Huffington Post.
HuffPo is one of the world's busiest websites and Arianna Huffington is one of the most influential women on the planet, all built on the back of free content. The reason for HuffPo's growth is because of the variety of content - much of it is pure pulp, but they also have some very good reporting to go with it, and it is a reputable news source worldwide.
The Herald will fail miserably in its efforts to make money via a paywall, although there will be a number of oldsters who will cough up because they feel they should.
Just remember, when it happens - reputed and predictably around July this year as the Herald will hope the forthcoming election will help their marketing - do not pay, but find out how to avoid the paywall and read what you want for free.
Copyright © Alan Charman