So, with its launch of the new look website today, The Times has taken the first bold step towards what will become the first UK newspaper to move toward a paywall model of delivering its product (The FT has always operated under a limited content model). Other News Corporation titles, owned by Rupert Murdoch, from around the world will be taking similar steps in future months. This comes rapidly on the back of the recent announcement of job losses at the office of The Times and Sunday Times in a bid to reduce losses that have been estimated to be up to a quarter of a million pounds every day.
James Harding, the editor of the Times, has admitted that the long term future of the newspaper is under threat and that costs need to be cut to free up funds for digital investment to cope with “galloping technological change”. Today is the first attempt to drive into a canter, the next will be offering premium paid content.
In a previous blog I made the case for a higher class of journalism through a real investment in investigative journalism. To many The Times has moved down market over recent years since moving to a tabloid format in late 2003, which was seen as a moderate success. This hasn’t necessarily meant that its investment in journalism, as perhaps the losses demonstrate, hasn’t continued. However with content cheap and feely available on the web and shared through social media such as Twitter The Times has struggled to make itself relevant to advertisers and to consumers. This begs the question as to whether they have invested in the right content.
It is going to be fascinating to watch how The Times makes its pitch to be offering a unique product when, from June this year, users will be asked to pay £1 per day, or £2 per week, to access the paper and its sister title, the Sunday Times. As previously mentioned a brilliant exposé of the kind we rarely see from newspapers these days would be a fantastic way of stamping its mark on the British media landscape and, perhaps, point the way to other publications globally for how a paywall model can be made to work.
Good quality, original content still sells. For example, I buy GQ every month as, in my opinion, no other magazine so completely touches on all my key interests or consistently pulls together such a diverse troop of intelligent writers. I also know many people who, every other Friday, bury their heads in Private Eye – a magazine with soaring sales figures. If The Times can offer a unique product its gamble with adopting a paywall may just work. If you or I can get the same content elsewhere for free then James Harding’s warning that the Establishment’s newspaper may cease to exist could well come true.
