Thetownend.com

What’s with the Adver blocking their articles now unless you subscribe? You get to see the first paragraph and the rest is blocked.

Cunts

Not the case for me, maybe because you're outside the UK? All I see is 5% articles and 95% bullshit clickbait links and adverts. A horrible website.

I have the issue as well, it's quite annoying

How dare a business charge for their service!

it allows you to read a certain amount of stories before the block.

private browsing/VPN usually get around it

You are correct. VPN solved it!

They're free to charge what they want.

But I won't be paying a penny. Their content is barely worth reading even when one doesn't have to pay. I might miss amusing myself with the banality of some of their article, though.

This one works for me, though.

And I take back what I said about worthless content - this one's a belter. Some quality compo arm folding and some prize comments below the article.

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/18727004.man-tripped-rolleston-arms-bench-wants-furniture-removed/?action=success#comments-feedback-anchor

 :Ride On Fatbury's Lovestick:

How do these muppets continually get into local newspapers?

If you are not following already can I recommend Angry People in Local Newspapers On Facebook, a daily dose of fumin arms folding in locals rags, having a poo next to a pot hole is another fave, the Advertiser appears very regularly.

Hmmm. It all makes sense  :)

https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/14766789.watch-swindon-ufo-footage-sparks-more-confirmed-sightings/

It's a vicious cycle resulting from a combo of inept management and cultural resistance to pay for content. We'll never have a good product if we refuse to pay.

Out of interest, would people pay £5 a month for The Athletic level (standard and depth) of coverage?

Nope

 :no:

nope

Print media is dying on its arse, and even more so at a local level. The local rag up here basically writes click bait which they put on Facebook and then report on peoples responses, whilst its available in hard copy I know no one under 70 who actually ever buys it.

Likewise I don't know anyone who buys a daily any more, even when I commuted it was all the Metro with the occasional over 50 reading the Mail or Express.

There are however a couple of local/county websites who do decent reporting but purely online, not altogether sure how they are funded as the sites are not made unusable by ad's unlike the local paper ones and their reporting generally seems to be more grown up and less biased.

I subscribe to a couple of magazines a month, mainly as I just quite like reading a magazine and the stories are longer and better written than in papers with good illustrations.

I note the Mail website will no longer allow you to access if you have an ad blocker running, so be it that gets accessed via Chrome on the rare occasion I need to.  

There you go, along with our right to moan about coverage. There's not enough demand for good quality content, even from the most likely market (fans who spend too long on the internet). Why would the adver invest and up the standards. Makes no commercial sense.

nah

I've recently subscribed to a couple of digital versions of print titles and a digital-only sports title. Don't want the print versions, but I do want to see the papers/mags continue. No such thing as a free lunch.

I enjoy the Athletic. I used to sub to Mundial before it went digital only.

We're so far behind the Scandis and the Yanks with our paid media, because there's a cultural expectation of free content.

And a corresponding deterioration in quality as a result. I'd quite like there to be an option to subscribe to a bundle, like with TV, rather than having separate subs for everything. I'm sure content suppliers would get more revenue that way and it'd be cheaper for subscribers. So n my own case, I could pay a monthly sub a la Netflix for access to maybe a dozen newspapers/mags/journals that I'm interested in for not much more than what I'm currrently paying for the individual subs. The titles I'm subscribing to individually would make less from me, but would get more from other people including them in their "bundle" who wouldn't have seen them as a sufficient priority to buy an individual sub. I'm sure I remember reading about someone had tried it but it died on its arse because too many of the big titles wanted to do their own thing

Couple of start ups have tried different takes on the bundle. One where you pay a fixed fee and have limited access to a bunch of titles and one (used to be called Agate but think it's changed) that does micropayments I.e. You load your account with £10 and then each article across their partners is 5p to 25p. Partner uptake is really low though, so the chances of multiple sites you're interested in being in there is small.

Gentlemans Journal is an interesting model. Rather than sub, you become a member and get lots of additional benefits beyond just the magazine. That model is doing well with US with regional titles too. Imagine paying the Adver £10 a month and on top of content, there's a members only Q and A with RW every fortnight etc etc.

I detest people who read papers in a shop that sells them like it's a library.

Another thumbs up for The Athletic from me, best sports content there is

Print media died when page 3 got binned. Speaking of which I was in some shitty little corner shop the other day and saw they still had a top self full of porno mags going.

How is there still a market for those when porn is just a click away?

PP beat me to it with the micropayments thing. I know of a similar one where the subscription is just $5 for a year (or maybe even a one off). It's mostly community led and has some large funding behind it. There is also no adds. A lot of accounts are just blogs and journals but there are more journalists getting involved.

What's great is you can integrate any website to it (as long as you have access to the code), so you can monetise your own website. It's also engagement focused so the longer a visitor spends on actively the page (there are flags for inactive lingering) the monetisation via micropayments continues. Another good thing is that as a visitor to one of the sites you don't need to be a subscriber (although it is encouraged, to grow the community and $5 for at least a year is buggar hall) and the site still receives micropayments.

In fact, a site like the TEF would benefit from it because it has a fair amount of engagement and no doubt would cover Barry's nominal costs. Barry, if you want some more info do let me know. Even if you just wanted to trial it. It's at zero cost either, purely the matter of inserting a line of code into the header and boom, you're away :)

Not speaking from experience ... but I assume consumers of hard copy material include the old, those with poor IT facilities/skills, those in poor broadband areas, truckers/travelling salespeople, forces personnel and those who want their habits to stay 'off the grid'.

Sorry Bamboo, my specialist subject!

Haha. I do think the micropayments thing will grow to full scale. It's quite worth getting into it now before all the "big boys" so to speak fully cotton on and corner the market. Great for small to medium sized industries.

No doubt the big wigs will eventually just buy up a fuck ton of domains and monetise them in this way and integrate their digital editions via this. Well, if they don't I'll be surprised.

Personally don't think the micropayment model will work. I think we'll see more and more big publishers create soft paywalls and member benefits.