a lickle bit o/t The Visitor

[Keith]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8385342.stm

Johnston Press starts charging for online local news

The group that own The Visitor are starting to charge for some on-line access. The Visitor isn't one of the papers they are charging for yet (making this a non-story for the time being, probably).

[bigreddog]

Interesting that the main point the NUJ make in the article that they' need to invest a lot more in proper local journalist/ism to be able to justify a charge.

More than that though. wouldn't an advertiser look less favourably on it too? advert in the visitor, which may not be selling what it used to, advert also in "the reporter" which only makes it as far as the cat tray in my house, and then a web advert, which people passing by may have to subscribe to see. as is proved by many businesses, marketing and advertising are far from being the same thing.

[heysham_mfc]

Don't think this is a good idea and it seems that they are just trying to make a bit of extra cash. it would aslo lose biusness of people using the website for local news if they had to pay a fee to view certain content if it were to happen it would need to be worth it and include everything on the website that you can get in the paper based version.

[Curly]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8385342.stm

Johnston Press starts charging for online local news

The group that own The Visitor are starting to charge for some on-line access. The Visitor isn't one of the papers they are charging for yet (making this a non-story for the time being, probably).

I think I'd rather pay for some news and have some quality as we do with the BEEB.
The alternative is going to your letter box to pick up The Reporter, then trek straight to the
garage to put it in a recycle box.
Actually, I might of been a bit harsh, lets go and see whats in it.......
Exclusive! -A man smokes a pipe by the canal!- Picture by Garth, too.
Err, no, I was right all along.

[campdave]

Don't think this is a good idea and it seems that they are just trying to make a bit of extra cash. it would aslo lose biusness of people using the website for local news if they had to pay a fee to view certain content if it were to happen it would need to be worth it and include everything on the website that you can get in the paper based version.

Ultimately the Visitor (and other papers) are private businesses that exist to make a profit.

In these days of falling ad revenue both online and in print, if people aren't buying papers because they're used to getting content online for free (not forgetting google etc who will suck out the information from the page to display on their various news sites, costing the newspaper site ad revenue), they either need to start charging for that content, or go under.