A sign of the Times

Rhoda Klapp

And yet somehow I manage without the Times, in fact I do not read any newspaper online, and I come here mainly to read what the othe commenters say given the prompt from the first post. There is nothing special about FN, PH, DK or the others which make them more interesting and inciteful than Nicholas, or Frank P, or TGF or any number of others who do not post things I agree with. And the commenters' stuff comes free. If this site were paywalled, I suspect most of us would decamp to somewhere free. Where people with opinions, bloggers, not journalists, will publish blogs and comments, free from editorial influences or the interests of some shifty proprietor.

This is not print. It is a different ball game. The internet primarily is a phenomenon which enables one not only to get a bigger readership, but to publish freely without gatekeepers. The established media only saw it as more readers, not more and better competition. The reaction of the established media has been late and inadequate. Move on, your model is dead.

Magnolia

I don't expect free journalism but the problem is the price. The pay wall is truly a wall that seems too difficult to climb over. I suspect that many of you journalists don't realise the reality of many people in watching where every pound or penny goes and flicking through web pages isn't as satisfying or relaxing as sitting down with the paper and a drink which feels much more substantial for the money. I also think that for many people the paper buying is a ritual which gives meaning to the daily walk or commute and a brief exchange of pleasantries with the vendor gives reassurance that all's well with the world and paying on-line is rather sterile in comparison. There is also the issue of what you get back from your commentors. They give you 'free journalism' and more importantly they give you ideas to copy and themes to research as well as providing an historical record of sorts on the past and present. I have noticed that when I use one of my 'words' they often pop up two days later in one of the DT blogs or in another comment so the ideas are swirling around amorphously and that would go with the wall. As things stand the worlds next greatest writer can hit the keypads and get started while still at school and without that they might wither and die before they've even started when snobby Oxbridge tells them they're not good enough. All in all a complicated problem.

TrevorsDen

Is this why the Telegraph censored Cables remarks about Murdoch? Was that what 'journalism' is all about? Can you give me one reason why I should ever buy the Telegraph again - no matter how its produced?

Sam

I am informed by a Times employee that Murdoch only put the paywall up to upset Google. If that's true then your argument doesn't work.

Stuart

I am a subscriber and I can't even find this article on their website!? The leaders on the front page of their site are still from December 24th.

Peter From Maidstone

i don't read the Spectator and would not pay to subscribe because Fraser and his staff choose not write anything I want to read, and choose to present soft-left politics at every opportunity.

If Fraser et all actually published a conservative publication then I might choose to read it and even subscribe to a paywall. But I have not felt it worthwhile to buy the Spectator for 18 months or so.

As Rhoda has said, there is more value in the commentators here than in the content produced by staff bloggers, or in the magazine itself. Produce a magazine that better reflects that readership and you might find people are willing to shell out to keep the Spectator going.

If you are losing readers then you need to look at your content, not blame your readers for being unwilling to pay. I happily pay to buy Standpoint magazine. You need to ask yourself why I no longer want to buy the Spectator.

alexsandr

Do we want to pay to read the biased views of a journo elite? As the blogosphere gets more mature I think it will leave MSM behind as a dinosaur.

strapworld

I subscribed to both The Times and The Telegraph. But no longer. I found the Times quite boring and annoyingly liberal, whilst The Telegraph just didn't know what direction it wanted to go in.

Last week the excellent PoliticalBetting blog had a story "Where does the print media go from here"?

It showed, amongst others that The Times from a January 2000 daily circulation of 726.349 had come down, in November to 466.311 a 17.21 reduction!

The Guardian had a November daily circulation of 270.582 a 11.35 reduction on January 2000.

The Telegraph in january 2009 had daily circulation figures of 1,022.263 2hich had fallen in November to 652.762 a fall of 12.28.

I will never subscribe to any paywall. I prefer to get my news from the radio and other media, not forgetting blogs which keep me much more informed.

Let us face it The Telegraph and the print media in general have failed to inform us, as CoffeHouse has failed as well, just why the story of Cable declaring WAR on Murdoch was never printed! (My new best pal Trevors Den, to his credit, has kept on about this, as I have on Nelson's failure to honour a promise on illegal immigration!

The real reason why people are moving away from journalism is the real truth, you are all declining to report the truth!

The Matthew Parris logic is flawed by the way. I can choose to enter a pub etc and buy a pint. If I subsscribe to The Times etc I have to stay with them for at least a month, the money is taken up front and I am trapped. Not a fair comparison at all. Again journalism and Truth are at odds!

Publius

I agree with Rhoda.

You thought you could ride the tiger. Now you find the tiger is riding you.

As for the rather childish delight in gadgets and the new digital age, I'm just not convinced. It reminds me of those predictions that electricity would soon be so cheap (because of nuclear power) that it wouldn't be worth charging for it; or that we would soon have so much leisure because of technology that we would struggle to know what to do with it all.

Fools then. Fools now.

Dave

As you well know it's advertisers, not readers, who have really paid for our news.

So have newspapers radically reinvented their advertising services for the digital age or have they focused 99% on their dying print model and lazily tried to repeat their useless space-on-a-page model?

I think you know the answer.

Many print publishers will die because they lacked the energy and imagination to build genuinely new services.

They left that for others to do because, like you, they were utterly convinced of their importance and had the belief that readers SHOULD keep them in business.

Unfortunately, no business was ever built on SHOULD.

In2minds

"I find myself advising young people, who want to start in journalism, to do something else if they can"

Yesterday we had the bit from the archives: 'Jeffrey Bernard does Christmas'.

So I went to Wikipedia (free) to remind myself of the facts about the man. He drifted into writing, he did not set out to do this nor did he attend a university offering a course in Journalism. How did he, or the Spectator, cope? In fact it seems that he was 'rescued' by a well-wisher who thought that if he did some writing he would spend less time in the pub. In other words journalism is quite easy, even a drunk can do it! Fraser Nelson has said, in a previous article , that he has never met a single graduate of one of these courses in his working life. Yet the academic world is awash with undergraduates spending their time 'studying' this subject. The few who I've met are all lefties, sombre, boring, humourless and above all 'committed'. It makes you think, does it not, what with the end of print journalism predicted any time soon (by 'experts') what will these people do, run pubs? I say the shake out of journalism and universities cannot come too soon, let's be rid of these people.

But then on the other hand I cannot bring myself to buy a copy of the Times, the paper one, even when I'm off on the train. As for the Kindles, iPads and the rest of that clutter, forget it. I don't have a mobile phone, will never buy one so have no need to 'move on' to these things.

PS - All my life the end of jazz has been predicted by those who 'know'. So I say as soon as universities offer courses of this the end is in sight, until then.........

Peter From Maidstone

The one problem with the Spectator CH is that it is very difficult for us all to communicate with each other. Were this easier than I am sure that a new forum could be created where commentators here, and new ones, with something interesting to say from a right of centre perspective could post short articles, have them reviewed and approved by an editorial committee, and then allow comments to be made as on the CH by other interested and interesting commentators.

justathought

As Matthew Parris will know PR Today carried out a survey on this very topic and found that 93% believed that new online should be financed by advertising and not by subscription.

Nor does Matthew acknowledge that the additional costs for the online publication are a 100th of the print version. What is being asked of the online readers is to pay for the print costs or even subsidise the loss making print version newspapers.

Rupert Murdoch is undertaking a brave experiment and as his organisation has deep pockets he can well afford to and so I wish him well. Unfortunately I don't agree as by putting a pay wall up the readership falters and falls and so does the brand of the Times. Pretty soon the advertisers will start to withdraw also and so on.

At the end of the day therefore the money follows the reader numbers, the more hits on the site the more advertising revenue. If there is to be a compromise then it must be the google news subscription which passports access to a range of news publications, but alas Rupert Murdoch's Times are not willing to participate seeing google as competition?

Through online news many hitherto unknown journalists who would not have been given the time of day in the print media are not celebs in their own right and have a large loyal readership which can sustain them and their sponsor publications. Long may this continue !

Marcher Baron

I used to read the Times, but since it disappeared behind a paywall I've stopped. If other papers follow its example, I'll stop reading them, too, and go down to my local library (I already pay council tax to keep that open) to read the hard copy there. Isn't advertising revenue enough?

Tiberius

You surely choose to read a publication because you like the content.

If you do choose to read it, why would you expect to do so gratis? I agree with Fraser because the print media is becoming obsolescent. Why would the customers of the new online media expect third parties (the advertisers) to pay for the product they are consumimg?

I abandoned the DT after the Laws affair, but have not yet signed up to the Times paywall because there is still free content available. But when it goes, I shan't begrudge subscribing (as I have done to the Spectator mag for years).

wound up

spot on TrevorsDen.

That's it with The Telegraph.

Nicholas

Circling the wagons. The problem with the paywall is that it competes against a basic human pleasure in buying something that can be tangibly held in the hand. The magazine or journal can be read in an armchair, taken on a bus or train or even into the little room (true of smartphones and iPad type devices I know but only after investment in them - odd magazines may be bought on a whim). It can be rolled up to hit flies (or other annoying things), flicked through when bored and thrown across the room in disgust. It makes a good coaster for the tea the trembling hand invariably spills in the saucer (no mugs in Schloss Nicholas). Interesting pieces can be cut out and filed, the pages can be scribbled on with notes ("looks like a queer", etc.) And there is nothing more satisfying than policing up the sitting room and study from time to time and consigning a pile of magazines to the re-cycling bin, especially The Spectator.

Currently the paywall is the equivalent of paying to see the Bearded Lady at the carnival. You feel curious, you pay, you go in, you come out, you feel cheated. That may change, with time, but as with most innovations their practical use tends to evolve rather than be promulgated by theory. Paywalls may turn out to be the internet equivalent of walking in front of a car with a red flag.

denis cooper

Maybe newspaper and magazine publishers need to get together and devise an industry-wide "pay per article" system.

I can't envisage that I'm ever going to take out a subscription with the Times or any other newspaper or magazine just to read the occasional article on-line, instead I'll simply say that I'll have to live without access to that article unless it seems sufficiently important to make it worth buying a print copy.

On other hand if I could buy credits which I could use over a wide range of publications, then I might well be prepared to spend some of them to read Times articles which seemed of particular interest.

So publishers can either arrange to get some of my money for allowing me to read just the items I want to read when I want to read them, or they can get none of my money at all except when I'm sufficiently interested to buy a print copy, but they shouldn't expect to get any of my money for on-line access to the very many articles which I don't want to read.

John Bowman

The same situation affecting newspapers resulting from the Internet applies to numerous other information suppliers who seem to be coping.

The answer is not to disappear behind walls of any type, but either to adapt, innovate or fold.

Successful selling requires the seller to provide something others need or want which they cannot get elsewhere, or with some unique factor, at a price they will pay commensurate with the benefit perceived.

The problem for the newspapers industry is it never had to "sell" because they had a monopoly, so they do not know how to sell or see why they should: people just bought out of habit or lack of an alternative.

Times have changed: Murdock has not. He could, before, buy up the competition he could not beat; he cannot buy the Internet... I hope.

Biggestaspidistra

Regrettably not Chrismassy reading for Fraser frpm the commenters. Personally I'd pay something, not much, not to read Matthew Parris.

One of the teething problems for paywall and the Times has resulted in Guido getting as many hits as the Times, and Guido isn't moaning.

AJC

I have purchased The Times daily since their half price school offer many years ago.

If the paywall subscription was combined with daily price I would subscribe. Otherwise I will get by without an additional subscription.

Frank P

Fraser

Well, to be fair, you did cough to knowing that, "it will not be a popular point to make amongst Coffee Housers". To that degree your prescience has born fruit; but I wonder whether you really expected it to be so roundly condemned - or the excellent analyses of why that condemnation is justified.

Had these blogs not been of benefit to those who provide the platform, I'm sure they would have burned it some time ago. I assume the irritating and sometimes intrusive adverts that you hang on these pages make it all worthwhile. So if this is the opening shot in a wheeze to make us pay as well as contribute to the blog, you had better have a better excuse than Mat Parris's carp, quoted above. Cheeky bugger! (an opportunity for TrevorsDen, he always bites).

As for the magazine; I have mentioned before that as an erstwhile subscriber of many, many years - and a reader for at least 65 years, I dumped my subscription because of changes in editorial policy under your predecessor. Losing the column of Mark Steyn was unfortunate, but losing Paul Johnson's in such a short space of time was careless and unforgivably stupid; those were the straws that broke this camel's back; but prior to that the political slide to well left of centre indicated a cynical hi-jacking; moreover appointing an editor who appears to regard his role here as ancillary to his other journalistic duties is taking the piss. Pity, I would love to renew my subscription, but you simply won't agree to the terms of contract - the main one being that you don't give succour to my political enemies and that you do provide some space for my political friends. At the moment you fulfil those clauses only via the voluntary work of the commentariat hereupon, which is why I continue to visit and occasionally grind out some 'inciteful' (great pun that, Rhoda - mind if I nick it?) copy. But don't expect us to cough up as well. That's downright daft!

yank

Well of course, we'd all pay for content, if it was the content we wanted.

Michael Totten is almost entirely financed by online donations, for example. People like his stuff, it's relevant and interesting. One feels enriched by it, and offers support.

Now let's see the Spectator try that, with this gaggle of scribblers, and we'll keep our eye on the tip jar. Better yet, put up a paywall, and we'll watch the hit counts vaporize.

The problem you all have is that you feel a sense of entitlement... that you deserve to tap into other people's money. It doesn't work that way. In the real world, outside the bubble, you have to earn your way. There is nothing special provided here. Nothing. In fact, the provided content is truncated (intentionally or blindly) and an outsider has to decode these truncations, in order to put the content into proper context.

That's probably the truest measure of the Spectator... it can't stand alone. Few will pay for such as that. Payment today is reserved for that which is unique... not the common.

Man in a Shed

The problem with paywalls for news are two fold.

1) Those who charge charge far too much.
2) Substitution: I don't miss the Times as there are plenty of alternatives, including amateur and state backed alternatives.

oldtimer

IIRC in the past, Fraser, you have praised this blog as a great source and stimulus - putting you in touch with your readers, or the few that are left. You cannot be in any doubt what many of them think. The Spectator team would experience a great void if they expected anyone to pay for a blog - though I can see you are working up to making the on-line version of your magazine payable.

I can see the case for a paywall to which regular subscribers get access along with their print copy. Smart publishers would operate a parallel run and, over time, try to persuade subscribers to drop the print copy and rely solely on the online version. A bit like my bank trying to get me to drop printed bank statements - a vain hope.

The other thing that would be paywall publishers need to do is to make it Android friendly as well as Ipad friendly. It will not be long before the Ipad, like the Iphone today vs Android smart phones, will be the minority pad device. An avalanche of Android based pads is about to be heaped upon us all.

Seamaster

Just a pity the Speccie's implementation on iPad (and Kindle) is so subpar.

Verity

This has a whiff of the spectre of Neathergate - a chimera not worth addressing by Fraser - about it.

Parris, unusually for him because he is such an able and talented writer, sets up a straw man. I have never heard anyone say they don't pay for content on the internet "on principle". Never once.

The reason so many choose not to pay for content is, there is so much principled and intelligent journalism available online free. If one subscribed to The Times, one would be paying for the exceptional writing of Parrish and A A Gill only, and I'm afraid that makes the cost too high.

Parrish's entire piece is a nonsense. In fact, I didn't even read it all the way through, so thank goodness I hadn't paid for it!

RobertD

Newspapers need to understand that many people do not want to read one paper from cover to cover, but to read what several papers of different hues have to say about a few topics. Until they, or an independent supplier, can get in place a system that charges the user per article, and then provides the user with an aggregate bill for the month ( or a fixed month subscription) and divies the money up between the supplying newspapers, then paywalls will just drive away customers. Its like restaurants who will only sell a full fixed menu even when most customer just want a drink or light bite. They get a few souls with hearty appetites, but the masses go elsewhere.

Paul Giles

I'll only pay for access to an online service if you promise that the advertisements will stay still. There are few things more irritating than the flickeriing words and pictures at the edged of your field of vision, and I certainly wouldn't pay good money to inflict that on myself.

LondonStatto

Newspapers aren't worth paying for.

I'd be interested to learn what percentage of Times subscribers are journalists, politicians and "opinion formers".

Verity

As someone said above --- can't be bothered to scroll up and down looking for the comment, but hat tip to you anyway --- if it stood alone, with no contributions by the commentariat, few people would even visit the site free of charge. I mean, pay to read World Expert on Every Single Country And Political System in The World Daniel Korski? I don't even read him for free.

Craig Strachan

Why shouldn't Google charge for web searches? Why allow people to get all that info for free?

C. Snow

I subscribe to The Spectator (print edition), have done for many years now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, but I will never pay for an online version of any print media; it's simply not as satisfying as having a physical copy to flick through in the case of books, magazines and newspapers and it's extremely easy to find free alternatives elsewhere when companies start introducing pay walls.

Peter From Maidstone

Craig, why should Google be allowed to visit my website and index it for free? Why should people have to view ads on Google search results pages?

The reason is that there is a balance between what Google gets from others and what it offers.

If the Spectator introduces a pay wall it will discover that the balance is not in its favour. It just isn't offering anything that most people will want to pay for, and it will lose all that it presently gains for nothing.

septicsam

I take the opposite view. I don’t think general interest journalism will ever pay for itself again—the free competition is too good. If you put up a paywall, it just means I will read Al-Jazeera more. Your ‘slot’ in my bookmark list will be taken over.
Commentators have got to make a personal choice: do I want the power, or the money? Their reach has been greatly boosted by free content, since many people who would never buy the Speccie can and do now read it free online. As most journalists are more interested in shaping people’s thoughts than in getting rich, I think they will adapt.

Derek

I was a subscriber to the print version of the Spectator until November, by when I had moved to a location too remote to expect to receive it, and will be again when I emerge - mainly for the "tangibility" that Nicholas praises; but the only online service I would consider subscribing for in the Spectator's case would be the book reviews which were an invaluable guide to what to put on my Amazon list of to-be-read-when-in-funds, and were of course often a great pleasure for the quality of writing and the knowledge and insight of the reviewers. All though posters may find alternative sites to gather if a paywall goes up here, I am not sure that there is any alternative to the back pages of the Spectator for book (and other) reviews.

andy

the "its free one click away" principal

decafT

the news industry as a whole has shot itself in the foot by thieving every piece of news from everywhere else in the industry.

when one paper breaks a story the rest of them immediately update their websites with it.

CH does it all the time, linking to a story in the Times and telling us what's in it.

news has therefore been commoditised, and none of the papers can differentiate themselves, except in the op-ed. they all offer exactly the same service.

because 99% of what they all churn out is unoriginal (either stolen from elsewhere or placed by PR), they're undeserving of our subscriptions.

too late to change that now; they should have started with paywalls from the very beginning, and not all set out to offer the same comprehensive but lazily produced service. actually relying on staff journalists to produce news, and so having heterogenous websites, may have been a viable alternative a few years ago, which could have succeeded down the line. we know it can work; look at the FT which is different to the rest of the broadsheets and so survives.

obviously having a comprehensive state broadcaster, which we're all forced to subscribe to, doesn't help.

Baron

Rhoda Klapp @ 10.53 sums it up well except that I would pay for markesteyn.com if Mark charged (and wrote) for it.

TrevorsDen

People buy newspapers to have their prejudices reinforced.
Thats why I do not buy the Telegraph any more. I look at its free website for research and for basic news. Under its present management I would not pay for that. It has no commentators that are worth reading - which leads me to my second point.

People buy newspapers for a particular service or commentator. The rest is an adjunct. For The Times for instance Matthew Parris is a good example.

People buy a newspaper because they have nothing better to do. They are on a train or are at an airport. They are in the pub.

Once somebody has an iPad (or a Kindle) then these reasons are just as valid. The Spectator is available on Kindle. As Mr Nelson says iPad etc offer a different experience from the hardcopy.

So will people be prepared to subscribe? Given the hardware I would still think twice but would like the option of one off purchases.

Verity

Septicsam - "As most journalists are more interested in shaping people’s thoughts than in getting rich, I think they will adapt."

What most journalists are interested in is irrelevant. Who matters are the proprietors.

Trevor's Den says that The Telegraph has no commentators who are worth reading, which tells us all we need to know about the self-important Trevor's Den.

James Delingpole? Daniel Hannan? Norman Tebbit? A couple whose names I can't immediately recall, but who I always read when they have a new post up ... but almost all the political commentators on The Telegraph are canny, articulate observers.

Craig Strachan

@Peter from Maidstone - exactly!

(Although I do subscribe to The Spectator magazine through Exact Editions. I used to buy the print version from a newsstand in Sant Monica, often a week late and about $6 over the U.K. cover price. That newsstand is closed now. The guy who ran it never looked very happy anyway. I hope he retrained as an on-line marketer or something and is much happier now.)

Noa

The sharpest, most provocative commentators on CH are not the professionals, Fraser.
I would go to the New Statesman or Guido to read , e.g; TGF, Nicholas, Verity or Rhoda.
In certain circumstances I'd pay to read their ideas in more developed form. If that is, the Spectator has the wit to harness the real intellectual property that adds a properly rightist political heft and grace to its own all too-often bland and undistinguished fare.

Frank P

Fraser

It seems a response is called for, given the previous 42 reactions to your post. Or are we due for another Neathering?

JohnAnt

I had bought The Times and read it online - with increasing distaste for its increasingly downmarket journalism. When it retreated behind its paywall, I stopped buying it and refused to pay for the online version.
And do you know what? The sky (?Sky) did not fall in. I am happier without it. It made me realize that its 'news' is simply its 'agenda'.
All the real news (financial, economic, macro-political) can be gleaned from the internet. Bloggers are meaner and keener than ever. The DT is a good example. (Its financial columns are also far better than those of the Times.)

I would not read another Matthew Parris column if you paid me. The Speccie and The Times are a bit like Radio 4 - that other dinosaur - always assuming their regular contributors are 'much loved', regardless of the quality of what they write.
They're not.

Scary Biscuits

I think I would be summarising most of the comments if I said that there were three objections to Fraser's argument: (1) content,(2) the price point and (3) technology.

(1) On content, like many above, I too used to subscribe to the Spectator until the previous editor made it left wing and boring - something Fraser has only partially reversed. The marketing people call it 'champagne for the brain' but this is a classic case of advertising what you wish you were providing not what you actually do. It's more like table wine, safe and uncontroversial, mostly written by journalists more concerned with their 'access' to politicians and approval in Westminster than with popularity with readers - hence the decline.

When I was at school the library had a collection of old Punch magazines going back to the Napoleonic War. The shocking thing about them was how vile they were. They pulled no punches criticising politicians. They were often crude and brutal as well as erudite but not always at the same time. Apparently, one of Napoleon's motivations for invading was simply to shut them up, so maddened was he by their lese majeste.

These days, jornos and politicians dine together, socialise together, sleep together and often swap jobs. This conflict, or conflation, of interest has made it impossible for either to do their jobs properly. The closest modern parallel to the old Punch is Guido Fawkes's blog. That he has no ambition in politics is what makes him so unique and so popular, and the real reason why he has more readers than The Times. (The paywall only accelerated matters.)

As as already been said above, what is really happening is tht the cosy oligopoly of the newspaper barons is being broken up. Journalists, however, are blaming the technology for this and trying to re-establish control of the market, rather than trying to offer the best product.

(2) Many companies that fail use new technology as an excuse to jack up margins whereas the real reason for the new technology is supplier convenience, not extra benefit to the customer. For example, a few years ago the Royal Mail had the good idea of letting anybody with a PC print their own stamps. I went off the idea, however, when I discovered that despite charging me the same price they were cutting my local post office out of the deal whilst still expecting them to handle the post. Worse, they then decided to start charging every month for the privilege of having the software to print their stamps even though you were paying for your own paper and ink. Unsurprisingly, you hardly ever see these stamps now and we have all gone back to pre-printed stamps.

The same applies to The Times' paywall. They have cut out the local newsagent and we are now supposed to use our own IT equipment for delivery but Murdoch expects us to pay not only the same daily price but to commit for a whole month, something our newsagents never asked us to do. An automated website with almost infinite power and costing hundreds of thousands is less flexible and customer friendly than an old-fashioned shop with a pen and paper record of who wants what on which day.

One reason for this lack of technology is that newspapers, because their not used to competing in a free and open market, have become top heavy. They all have highly paid managers and 'executives'. When the Barclays brothers bought the Telegraph they made matters worse by adding to this overhead and moving them all to swanky offices next to Buckingham Palace. It's strange isn't it that a paywall is being pushed harder than cutting their cloth to fit their income and, say, moving to cheaper offices south of the river.

So no, Matthew Parris, it's not the principle of paying for something that people are objecting to; it's the principle of not being ripped off, which is what Murdoch's executives are trying to do to us.

This leads onto (3) technology. The newspapers (partly because of their overpaid 'executives') have been innovation free zones, leaving the field to others. They let Google, an internet search company, replace them as the leading news aggregators. They have let Apple design a micropayment system for them. Look a the Coffee House, for example. Many bedroom bloggers have a better look and feel. Why can't the Spectator do better than a kid in his bedroom? For as long as they let other companies do the innovating and private bloggers providing the most interesting content, traditional news companies can hardly expect to be the ones getting the margin.

So my advice to the Spectator would be to copy Punch from 200 years ago or the best bloggers today. Become a guerilla. It's cheap, effective and high margin.

Get out of the comfortable mainstream. Go right wing, scarily so, and then surprise everybody by not having the same definition of right wing as everybody else. Make friends with Tim Montgomerie, Mark Steyn, John Redood, Michael Fallon and other outcasts. Make friends with your audience too, like the best bloggers do, not with politicians. Come out with a website that is the most useable of any on the market. Apple have proved that useability sells. Don't be confused by 'apps' though. They are increasingly converging with webpages. Finally, there is no reason why some contect couldn't be pay per use but at the very least offer the same flexibility as a local newsagent. Better still do a deal ith a phone company, a bank, other publishers and set up a functioning micropayments system. If eBay can do it, why can't the newspapers?

If you can do these things, you'll survive. If not, you'll go the way of Punch, also once the 'oldest continuously published magazine'.

JohnAnt

Fraser was so proud when the Speccie Blog got Best In Show 2009 or whatever it was - it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that he should be paying us, not we him.
If he could a) restore the mag to its former glory (see this week's Jeffrey Barnard and Mark Steyn blog contributions for an idea of what the writing used to be) and b) manage to get it reliably postally delivered, I might well subscribe again.
But pay to write this rant, er, critique? Are you joking?

fvw

I tried the paywalled Times for a month. I found it quite dry and lifeless, with something of the graveyard about it.

Silent Hunter

"unless paid subscription works, then our kind of journalism is doomed"

Oh well . . . Byeeee!

pharbitis

Everyone seems to have overlooked a small but most important role for printed newspapers that trumps internet news.
What else would line a cat litter tray? Or be put on the floor for puppies to pee on?
Absorbency varies between papers: the FT is best but there is something satisfying about watching the Telegraph darken as it is wetted, especially after a spiteful story like the Laws one, or see a vapid celebrity image obliterated with poo - the Daily Mail always obliges. Semi-glossy inserts are useless and staples can be a problem...
And I have read articles I would otherwise have missed as I spread or pick up the papers. Even sodden, a good story is readable and ought to be a test for a journalist: would my piece be read if soaked in pee?

Rhoda Klapp

Ok, here's a plan. Evidently Fraser is warming us up to take the Spectator behind a paywall. Well, good luck with that is what I'd have to say, we've seen the reaction of the commentariat here, and it is my observation that when we are near-unanimous, it means something. So as I find I rarely read the articles here, just the CH, I have to say, take it, and good luck. Now separate out the Coffee House and use it to pioneer something new. Rather as Scary Biscuits has proposed, a co-op between a journo/editorial staff and a slightly-moderated commentariat. Take submissions from anybody who can write something interesting or challenging, edit for offensive content or libel and put it up. By all means have regular bloggers, but with a greater range and (a personal preference) a ban on posts about what my good mate who is a journo posted on another blog. Keep it all polite, of course, there are other blogs for the braying tribalist hordes. In other words, take it out if the bubble and into the world the rest of us live in.

PS In my original comment here, I used the word inciteful. Lest anybody think it was a clever pun, let me admit it was only a spelling error. Insightful was what I was aiming at.

John Richardson

Re the liberal media........

Mr Nelson is incredible.

How he can treat his readers with intellectual contempt (Neather) and then expect to be taken seriously is incredible.

Peter from Maidstone's first paragraph at 11:46 on Boxing Day sums things up perfectly.

A recall James Delingpole admitting a few days ago how disappointed he is in The Fourth Estate. We all are.
Delingpole was referring to the craven and simply dishonest 'coverage' of the Green/renewable/CO2 issue, but the same dishonesty is apparent across the whole print media on every important issue.
You, the established 'progressive liberal' journalists, are our enemies.
I loathe everything you stand for.
I despise your sometime posturing as 'right wing'.
Your presumption and lack of self awareness used to annoy, me but now I view it positively, as it is a further sign of your incipient decay.
Further, I am constantly encouraged by your lack of imagination, originality or wit.
I do not (any longer) know anybody who believes what they read in any newspaper.
You have finally been 'sussed' by the People. At last.
I regard every single newspaper, television station and radio station as though they are simply modern, western versions of the old CCCP's information & news media. You are uniform in perspective, dishonest and rightly held in contempt by any thinking person. I am not making this up or simply ranting.
You lie for a living.
You ignore the truth.
You attack anyone who tries to be honest.
You will receive your just reward, as we all do, in this world or in the next.

Peter Briffa

The principle Parris refers to is the principle that punters won't pay for anything to read on-line, not some eccentric principle that punters won't pay for his purple prose. His pub analogy also falls down. We all appreciate that beer costs money, and publicans need to earn a crust, but if there is a pub next door offering free booze, which one are we going to go to?

Pete Hoskin

Don’t mean to hijack Fraser’s thread, but I thought I might reply to some of the points made above...

1) I’m very keen to give CoffeeHousers a more prominent platform – although it should be said that we have tried to do so. The CoffeeHousers’ Wall is just one example, albeit a small one. And we once introduced a Sunday Essay, whereby readers could submit complete blog posts – but we had to stop that after a muted response. Some CoffeeHousers claimed at the time that we were just trying to exploit them for free content.

My instinct now is to do more with the Wall. One of you got in touch with me recently and suggested a “Comment of the Week” feature on the Wall – by which we could highlight and award, well, the comment of the week. It’s an idea I like, and I’m looking to introduce it in the New Year. But we can certainly go even further in terms of making the Wall a proper forum for CoffeeHousers, as Peter from Maidstone suggests. I’ve got a few ideas in my head, but do get in touch on phoskin @ spectator.co.uk if you’ve got any suggestions.

2) Scary Biscuits: points taken about the look and the feel of the site. We’re working towards a proper redesign in 2011, so hopefully you should see some improvements on that front.

And of the people you list, Tim Montgomerie, John Redwood and Michael Fallon have all written for the magazine and/or the website fairly recently.

3) Rhoda Klapp: I don’t think Fraser is warming you up for a paywall – not least because we already have one! Non-subscribers haven’t been able to read the latest issue of the magazine online for about a year-and-a-half now. It’s safe to say that we won’t be putting the blogs behind that paywall. Like I say above, I’m keen on the idea of “a co-op between a journo/editorial staff and a slightly-moderated commentariat” – so will put some thought into it.

4) CoffeeHousers all: do always feel free to get in touch with me – on phoskin @ spectator .co.uk – about anything to do with the site. I can’t make promises about this part of the site, or other – but it’s always good to hear your thoughts.

Frank P

Not so much a Sign of the Times, Fraser. as a clamorous unanimous shellacking! I know we're still surrounded by tinsel, but don't you think this calls for a meeting of t'com-mit-teeee and some sort of answer contrived to a fifty-odd shot salvo (and still firing I suspect). We can't all be wrong.
Or perhaps you consider that we're just the useful idiots that we so often complain about ourselves?

Frank P

Sorry Pete, we crossed posts there and you have obviously been deputed to take the flak. Perhaps we'll hear from Fraser when he gets out of the Sauna. To be fair to you, you have always responded to concerns and deserve much credit for that. But Fraser is obviously completely out of touch - evidenced by the effrontery contained in his above post.

Magnolia

@Pharbitis
So very funny.
You can't make up the fire with an online newspaper and I too have found myself reading an article covered in ash and scrunched up that I could have kicked myself for missing. Here in the Yorkshire Dales we find that the local newspapers are particularly flammable (I shall get into trouble for that word) and I would say that they know their market. The DT regularly puts my fire out and it just smoulders along and goes out. It must have some sort of glaze or perhaps waterproof coating that's critical for city dwellers.

normanc

I must be in a minority of one but I actually prefer reading the magazine on my Kindle (in truth, I prefer reading everything on Kindle if I can) and my subscription cost has gone down 75%.

As for paying for online content, there are a couple of blogs I try and make a donation to now and again as I feel they are worth something. I wouldn't subscribe to any newspaper site, I simply don't spend the time on any one (5 mins a day to read the latest Booker, Delingpole, Heffer & Tebbit on Telegraph is about it) to justify the outlay.

I'd happily pay 25p a time to read the four names I posted above though, which depending on the number of articles a week may work out about the same. It's just that I'd feel I'm paying for what I want, rather than paying for 99% complete garbage to get to the 1% that interests me.

Scary Biscuits

Pete, thanks for the reply but I don't think you've understood what I was saying. You really need to get out of your comfort zone; having an occassion article from Redwood or Fallon really isn't it. This is just what everybody else does. No, to differientiate yourself you need to be different. Content-wise, the easiest way to do this is by making an uncomfortable change in editorial direction. Think, what will make you unpopular amongst your competitors in other publications? That should be your test as to what will go down well with the paying public. You should aim to be at least as hated by lefties as Iain Dale (mild-mannered though he was). A publication like the Speccie doesn't need everybody to like it, just enough to sustain it. Iain Dale's success was that he enraged lefties and the Speccie's failure so far is that it hasn't achieved the same upset.

Similarly, on technology, I'm not talking about just a refresh. Again, that is what everybody else does. You need more than this.

As a final thought on aligning yourself with your readers rather than your competitors in Westminster, who did you invite to your Christmas party? Last year Political Betting invited their readers. So did Guido. By contrast, the Spectator invited just other people from the press and polititians including prominent lefties. Ditto at your reception at the Conservative Party Conference (where I was at a much more intelligent and good looking reception in the room next door). This tells you everything about where your priorities lie. You need to get back in touch with your customers. Why not invite them to your next party?

doomsayer

Doooooooooooooommmmmed........! Better find alternative sources of incomes FAST. We will just move from sites to sites for news & information. Russian/Indian/Asian/Latin American/African news websites are offering similar news and feeds- most based on news from Western news-agencies, eg Reuters. There is no such thing as unbiased news. And we are willing to accept that. There are always countries which are willing to provide news services for free. Biased or otherwise. No way to beat the internet freebies system, mates. Learn to accept the trends or go down in history as the last flight of readership from the subscribed news puff up in smoke.

Andrew Zalotocky

I think the Times paywall will be commercially successful. A free online edition of the Times (or anything else) generates revenue from readers clicking on the adverts. But most of them won't click on any ads, and the more readers the online edition attracts the more money has to be spent on servers, bandwidth, etc. So most of the readers of a free online publication represent a cost to the publisher rather than a source of revenue.

With a paywall every online reader is a source of revenue, whether they are long-term subscribers or just buying a particular story. Advertising revenue may decrease somewhat because the audience is smaller but overall the publisher should still be better off.

A newspaper that erects a paywall may well have less influence on public opinion and hence on politicians. But it's very difficult to measure that influence or even prove it exists, while the cost of providing a free online edition is a hard fact. Also, people who are involved in politics or who follow it closely are likely to take out a subscription anyway. So the newspaper would still have an influence among the people who were most likely to pay attention to it when it was free.

Finally, if more newspapers follow The Times there will be a huge demand for writers who can attract new subscribers and pay-per-article readers. Columnists who can do this on a regular basis will stand to make an awful lot of money.

Pete Hoskin

Scary Biscuits: And thanks for your reply! Will send you an email shortly...

Gary Williams

So conservative opinion-formers Matthew and Fraser welcome vigorous competition in education, in health care, in fact in all markets, except their own? Would that be as a matter of "principle", or as a matter of "principal"?

Stuff changes, guys. Movable type has been around for more than 500 years, yet we're still figuring out what to do with it. The consumer internet has been around for 1/30th as long. How many newspapers came and went before Al Gore retroactively invented the internet?
There is more than enough advertising money available to support as much journalism as the world needs. At the present time, there are just too many vendors competing for that money, with the result that few get a big enough slice to support journalists in the late 20th Century-style to which they have become accustomed.

PayDirt

Just to say as an experiment I recently took out a subscription to FT. For about £100 you get the weekend newspaper, but more importantly the whole week online. I was sceptical at first but I find I can whizz through the FT every day and pick up on anything to tickles my fancy. Not bad for the price.

Nik Darlington

I haven't paid for a Times online subscription (though I'm forever tempted, because I miss reading Finkelstein and Sylvester), however it has prompted me, whenever I decide to buy a hard copy of a newspaper, to purchase The Times.

So Murdoch's ruse has worked in one way. He wants to sell news and probably doesn't care much whether it's in print or online.

Archibald

It's an interesting analogy Matthew uses, as news and booze aren't really comparable, are they? There isn't one pub selling booze but loadsa others giving it away for free. And where supermarkets are effectively - well, almost - giving it away for free, publicans are up in arms and pubs across the land are shutting down. Perhaps comparing sport and news would make more sense, as many people willingly fork out for sports channels from Murdoch and others, knowing they will get to see proper exclusive material packaged very effectively. Sadly for you and Murdoch, I'm pretty sure he's not yet able to buy the rights to the news, so all you are doing is selling opinion. Given there are hundreds of other of outlets giving equal quality for no charge, there will surely only be one winner - even the 'pay' articles increasingly desperately pushed here by you and your bloggers tend to give the jist of what is being said in the blog. Not once have I thought 'I must pay to find out more' as it is invariably yet another 'controversial' stance taken by yet another predictable hack who has spent the past week desperately trying to come up with something to be annoyed about, and failing to sound convincing. All of you so committed to free quality really should quit moping, get together in a smoke-free room and agree to collude to royally shaft advertisers. It could be your only hope, and I for one will happily look the other way while you do it.

TGF UKIP

Poor young Fraser Nelson, if he wasn't such an instinctive and irredeemable Villager and such an archetypal "metropolitan commentator" one might almost feel sorry for him. However, he is, so one doesn't.

Poor young Fraser must, however, be quietly crapping himself and rather desperately hoping that his bosses don't chance to read his post and light upon the very evident and massive dissatisfaction the avalanche of comments indicate there is over his Spectator. (Don't worry though, Fraser, one of your enemies is bound to alert them.)

Very difficult to say whose comment this tardy commentator (and v shortly to be ex Speccie subscriber) agrees with most as I agree with virtually all of them, though Peter from Maidstone's at 11.46 am yesterday and John Richardson's at 12.17 today did draw particular roars of approval.

In one respect, however, I may be at variance with some of the bretheren here. I rarely, if ever, visit The Wall as I feel quite guilty enough spending the amount of time I do on the CH blog and, quite frankly, the Coffee House suits me quite admirably as it is. I really enjoy having someone to spark off and to provide me with an abundance of ammunition which the current crop of teenage metropolitans, do quite admirably. The only line I can and do draw is at Korski - just who is he related to or sleeping with?

While I do want to read a conservative magazine as opposed to the vapid, village publication the house mag currently is, a blog is different. You can't argue, insult and debate with a mag but you can on a blog and that's what blogs should be for. So I guess, Pete, one of the few ways you could actually improve CH is to invite some main posts from the likes of Pot Head or perhaps even better still our resident arch Camerluvvie, Tiberius, either writing as himself or under his rougharse pseudonym, TrevorsDen.

Derek

I have the impression from the Wall, whose posters I admit may not be representative of the readership, that if the Spectator does decide to invite readers to its next party, which would certainly be fun - especially if a video were made of it, a venue had better be chosen with wheelchair ramps.

TGF UKIP

For an amusing glimpse of the tue nature of contemporary journalism, CHers can go to a 17th December post on the ever splendid wattsupwiththat.com website and view an exchange on the "climate change" scam in The Australian newspaper between University of New South Wales senior research fellow in journalism, David McKnight and Joanne Nova, author of The Sceptics Handbook. Suffice it to say that Ms Nova's demolition job would be worthy of our own dear Verity herself.

CHers may also like to amuse themselves by mentally debating which of the Speccie's prissy teenagers they would consider most likely to have come under a McKnight's influence.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

I have stopped buying my regular newspaper, "The Telegraph", because the ink is so inferior it comes off onto my fingers and spreads over all the surfaces in my home and on my clothes. I wrote twice to the Editor, and didn't even get the courtesy of a reply. Good old-fashioned term! I enjoy reading the "Spectator", as it is a relief from the moral sickness of the "Guardian" and to a lesser degree, the modernised "Times". The "Daily Mail" is too reminiscent of the idiots one sees when out shopping, whereas the "Spectator" transports me to a place filled with good theatre, witty reviews and excellent, well-written articles. The politics? Well, I can only assume that they are playing it safe, and doing their best not to offend CCC (Caring, Compassionate Cameron).

Herbert Thornton

So, some Internet sites that publish news and opinion believe that readers should pay for the privilege of reading their material - while many readers feel that it ought to be free and very much resent the suggestion that they should have to pay.

Wikileaks on the other hand is not only free, but a very large number of people are eager to send Mr Assange money to keep Wikileaks (and him) going.

Is not the contrast curious?

Naomi Muse

The business models for newspapers used to be so clear and clean - advertising pays for large amounts of cost and the regular reader pays a nominal sum - the journalists, editors, printers and machines all get paid for and so do the advertising sales people and distributors.

Companies have attempted to corner the market in closed access to content in this technological age by the original merger between Time Warner and AOL in 2000. The paying subscribers to AOL were captive but that didn't make them buy Time Warner products nor did it create an unassailable growth in advertising via AOL. Platform and content has been the argument through many business hiccups throughout the world in the last 10 years.

There is an awful disquiet amongst writers who get paid for their work, that they might cease to be paid for it if the free content situation goes on for very long, for all the previously sound business models disappear along with everyone's intellectual property.

I haven't bothered to read the Times since it became a paying sub. That doesn't mean that I would not continue to read it but there are other well written articles elsewhere.

As to the blogs, there are some posters well worth reading and sometimes I scroll down to read their comment immediately after reading the article at the top.

It's all in a state of flux, and so more change will happen. I shall read the Spekkie blogs and continue to get the spectator from the newsstands since my copy by post often arrived on the Monday following publication, which is a tad too late.

Jeffy

I can get the news from the wires (even The Times does little more than embellish it) and the comment from bloggers (who write just as well as journalists). The only reason to buy the paper is because you want something physical to hold and read. If you are online, there is no conceivable reason to be paying.

Jeffy