A bunch of ARSE from APN/NZ Herald

The story is self explanatory:

nzherald.co.nz to charge for premium content

 

07.09.05 1.00pm

 

During the next week nzherald.co.nz will introduce charges to view some exclusive premium content and to access archived material more than seven days old.

Access to most content on the site will remain free of charge, but exclusive comment material, where columnists analyse what is behind the news, as well as the daily editorials, news cartoons and humour columns, will require an nzherald.co.nz subscription to access. The fee will not apply to sports columns.

Accessing content using our article search facility will change too, and a subscription will be required to retrieve stories that are more than seven days old. However, articles older than seven days can still be read free of charge, if they are accessed through the website's subject structure (infocus).

A subscription to nzherald.co.nz will cost $3/day or $99/year and readers will be able to subscribe online using their credit card.

Comments

[dim]

Translation - some exec has seen the Herald web-sites pre-election hit statistics and thought: 'My God! If they all payed us $3 a day we'd be rich!'

Prediction #1 - it will cost more to set up the infrastructure to do this than the Herald will ever make in profit.

Prediction #2 - When the Heralds visitor count plummets (because everyone can get their news for free from Stuff) they will lose most of the advertising revenue they currently get.

[Pete]

Pardon my french but FUCK this, it is utter bullshit
They were becomming a fantastic paper of record for reserarchers to use such as myself, and building up a great repuation for it.
They have thrown this all away to becoem crap like the stuff site
well done assholes

[Rich]

Like you'd pay to read the Herald's editorials and opinions? I get most of that stuff posted free in my letterbox - courtesy of the ACT party.

(Oh I see - when ACT closes down after the election there'll be a gap in the market for bigoted bullshite - and APN think that people will *pay* for it..)

[Adolf Fiinkensein]

Oh dear, there goes half of my daily sport. Publishijng the follies of Herald journos and opiners. No way I'm going to pay for that.

[AL]

Well there's a good way of reducing the visibility of Herald columnists. Remove access from the political junkies who read their every column.

Someone should relate to the Herald editors the experience of the Times Online and various other international papers.

[SPC]

Welcome to 21st century user pays.

Health and education vouchers - ala accomodation supplements next.

My gym is by the library. I'll use it more and I won't even buy the print edition.

[Craig Ranapia]

My memory isn't the best, but wasn't APN (then Wilson and Horton) in a huge stoush a few years back because it assumed it had the rights to post columns on-line without additional payment, and at least one columnist disagreed?

There's also the perennial problem most newspapers and magazines face: Why is someone going to pay for a dead tree edition, if they can get exactly the same stuff on-line for free. I used to love being able to read 'The Spectator' on line the same day it was published in the UK, and a week before the print version was available here.

Wasn't exactly helping the magazine's bottom line though...

[stephen]

Fuck, this will break all kinds of existing links.

If they have to do it, why not set up a new URL rather than requireing the infocus section id?

So thoughtless. Fewer incoming links for the Herald.

I always link to Herald stories over Stuff because Stuff links disappear.

Aarggh.

[randominanity]

so if we have to front up with cash will that mean they'll remove some of the advertising from the site? Especially the animated ones that make it murder for those with 56k modems?

I bet they bloody won't.

[dave]

what utter wankers - I`d have to pay to read ny own work now.... on the odd occasion I write for NZH

[Zach]

Well that is very disappointing news. Be interesting to see if existing links go dead.

I use their XML feed to provide RSS and a box on my link page. Presumably this will also be pulled.

Can anyone remember that story a few months back about a large paper which reversed its decision to go restricted after their traffic dropped by 99.9%?

[Zippy Gonzales]

Try as I might, your link goes to a Herald site blank of article but full of advertising. Do you think the article is too old for non-subscribers to read already?

[stef]

I blame the aussies for all this, most of the major news organisations there make you pay for access to certian stories. Though the yansk yet you have the iformation for free though your details are sold on to advertisers.

[Russell Brown]

I've just talked to Matthew Harman at the Herald. News stories will be free and *will not* expire (phew!), but if you want to use the Herald's onsite search to find them it will cost money. (So we all just switch to Google site: search)

But opinion columns will be "premium content"; $3 a time or $99 a year. Duh. Not so smart.

But don't blame the Aussies. It's Tony O'Reilly's idea.

Cheers,
RB

[sagenz]

I guess we will all just have to get our news from the blogosphere now :)

[SPC]

I was at the library today looking over the Wednesday Herald and noted, in letters to the editor columns, complaints of bias in the selection of those that are published.

Papers make it pretty clear where the editorial bias is, generally it's pro tax cuts and pro business vs unions. This reflects the background or circumstance of writers and the nature of the private sector.

One would expect the letters column area to reflect this as well. Which is my opinion.

But it's noteworthy the paper tried to suggest, by publishing complaints from both sides, that it has been even handed and there is simply misplaced concerned about it from some of the partisans.

The sure way to get published, making criticism of editors, is to say how your letter will not be published - so they publish it, to present themsleves as bigger than the person with the complaint and to dismiss the criticism.

Another point of note and of some slight relevance to this discussion, those of the right threatened to cancel their subscription. As if using this discipline to manage compliance to their will. The same measure taking money out of public provision into private hands, from where business hope to gain in private sector service provision or consumer purchase, is behind tax cut policy.

But in this instance, it was the Herald rather than government being the subject of movement of money threat.

I of course would resort to public library's, to keep an eye on the columns of the Herald, rather than encourage drift to user pays on-line.

On the issue of market competition, we have little in our press. Why does the Dominion Post, not run an editorially left of cente version of their paper in Auckland? One which adds in some Auckland news and sport. It's a viable market option, why would a pro tax cut and pro business ideology get in the way of a market place opportunity?

Sure the Herald could run an edition in Wellington and Christchurch with local news and sport. Why does no one do this - is this because it is more secure to run a cost plus business without real competition?

[Zach]

It is quite easy for nzh to either prevent google from spidering the site, or prevent direct links from google (though greasemonkey can get around that one). We shall see.

Live link: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&ObjectID=10344446

I'm not sure that MH was correct in implying that all the content will be reachable through navigation. Try this:
- Click a section on the left, eg "Business".
- Click the small "More Headlines" link on the following page.
This gives you about 10 days of news from that section. How do you go back even further? Perhaps they are planning to extend the interface.

[Matthew Harman]

Zach,you're right in thinking that the section templates (ie: Business) only take you back a week or so. This is because of the volume of content that gets put into them.

However, content on the nzherald.co.nz site is very heavily categorised into topics/features etc -- and by looking at one of these more tightly focused categories, you can see material that goes back much further (years in many cases).

Best way to access this old material is via Site Explorer - which you can find in the left hand nav.

...and we're not going to be preventing any legit search engine from spidering the site. We like inbound links.

[Rich]

The Herald letters are edited by a curmudgeonly right winger of the most extreme degree. Knowing this helps you understand what gets printed.

They also don't follow the usual rules of a letters page (spiking circulars, requiring a minimal level of factuality and grammar, etc) - possibly if they did they would have insufficient letters to fill a page.

[Zach]

Hey Matthew - long time no see!

Thanks. I guess Site Explorer is where it's at. Any chance of RSS feeds (eg http://today.reuters.com/rss/) as token compensation?