Some of the issues are these:

1) There is good-enough free-to-view content available covering what Archant papers cover, and now always will be.

2) Archant wants to sell you "a newspaper". But pretty much no-one wants to read "a newspaper". Each person will read a different selection of articles based on their interests. So what the newspapers want to sell and what the punters want to buy are two different things. This rarely goes well for whoever's selling. I don't believe the Times, the Telegraph etc do well from their paywalled offererings. The two papers which do do well, financially at least, from online are the FT and the Mail. No-one really matches the FT at what they do, and the Mail (which lest we forget is *not* behind a paywall) has perfected, well, calling it the worst kind of sordid clickbaitery rather gives away my own prejudices, but there it is.

3) Advertisers have much more targetted ways of reaching their own audiences than newspapers can offer. Facebook are best at this but most SM players are much better than any print title can really hope to be, as are the like of Google who use the content of your gmail account and your search history to target ads at you, Microsoft who...well, you get the idea.

4) The likes of Google in particular aggressively target copyright in jurisdictions around the world, so that they can display in search results content it's cost other people (e.g. newspapers) to produce. The more they can show, the less likely it is that the newspaper's site gets clicked on. Google gets the ad revenue, not the newspaper. Google doesn't pay the journalists, of course.

5) For the Oink'un in particular, being nose-in-cheek with the club used to pay benefits: inside scoops and so on. But now the club has its own media operation and uses that rather than selective leaks to/stories with Archant to get its story across. Criticise the club = lose access. But have access = print what the club will promulgate itself anyway. Again, not a happy space to attempt to inhabit.

6) Interesting pay-per-view options like Axate are around but I've no idea how successful they are, or ever will be.

Posted By: Old Man, Oct 9, 19:59:41