The Globe and Mail has announced it will move some of its digital content behind a paywall in the summer of 2012.
More details here:
The Globe and Mail will still feature a robust business-news site for non-subscribers, and that news will be available on mobile devices. Deeper analysis pieces, some feature columnists, and other exclusive features will be provided to paying subscribers. The subscription-based GlobeInvestorGold.com site, which offers personalized stock charts, e-mailed stock alerts and archived news reports, will be folded into the new paid product. It will be expanded with more personalized features for readers.
Do a thought experiment: one columnist is gassing off about something for free; another is gassing off on the same topic but wants you to pay to go behind a pay-wall to witness. Which will you read and link to?
PS. Looks like the Irvings don't get it either. Or maybe they do and this is just a desperate Hail Mary before the final dirt-nap.
Meh. The G&M has been irrelevant to me since their endorsement of the Harper regime. The sooner it dies of the better.
ReplyDeleteSays editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, in the article:
ReplyDelete“We need to deepen our relationship with our core readers, and give them services and rewards for that loyalty,” ... “...The active and loyal user is going to have a different relationship from the casual reader.”
Spoken like a true politician, who promises much and delivers little.
Since weaning myself from the Globe many months ago, I have found a more than adequate substitute in The Toronto Star, which not only features excellent reporting but also contains a heart and social conscience that the Globe either never had or aost long ago.
Wow. That's an amazing decision. The same mistake has been made (and rescinded afterwards) by countless papers around the world since the beginning of the digital era. In the end, few subscribers will pay, many long-time readers will stop reading, and they will reverse this decision. Presumably after losing a ton of ad revenue and spending a ton of money on changes to their web interface.
ReplyDeleteThese paywalls are often easy to defeat, for example just cut/delete everything past the question mark out and hit return in the NYT, other just hit escape before the page fully loads, I have to admit the WSJ does not have a foolproof crack, but sometime copying the url to google and doing a search gives you a clean copy.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteFair is fair.
ReplyDeleteIf they're going to put some content behind a paywall, they should also pay people to click on the link to Margaret Wente.