How's Rupert Murdoch's paywall working out at the Times of London? | Hacker News Reader

How's Rupert Murdoch's paywall working out at the Times of London?

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19 pointspg15 comments

Hmmm. I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm a subscribed member. I've been reading the Times for a while, and I really enjoy their writing, so I decided to sign up.

The one thing I noticed is that a) most articles don't have comments any more. 3-4 comments is the norm. On one hand, it's a bit sad...but..

b) the comments that are there tend to be far more worth reading. The old Times site had a big problem with trolls and flamers, and somewhat unsurprisingly, this problem is greatly diminished. It would be nice to see more comments though.

For me, it's almost like a very quiet HN at times. I haven't regretted signing up yet, though I've never used any of the Times+ stuff that's 'supposed' to be the benefit. Cutting out the trolls in the comments is worth the money to me.

You read newspaper for comments?

Nope :).

I signed up because I like the writing, and columnists and I'm willing to pay for good content. Comments are just something that I noticed was an emergent property.

You think their writing is so much superior to say the guardian, or seeing as you might have conservative leanings, the telegraph?

Simply put..yes! :).

I did try the Guardian and Telegraph, but I just preferred the articles I found in the Times.

I read news sources -- such as HN -- at least as much for the comments as for the news.

If one of the UK's newspaper websites had a good way to filter comments and allow me to more easily see the comments I'm interested in, make my own comments, and engage in conversations, then I would probably read that newspaper a lot more.

In that case, it sounds like charging for commenting could be a better model.

or they could approach a reddit-like approach. I would absolutely love to have such a feature on my online newspaper.

I wonder is some kind of reverse flattr would cut out the trolling: as a commenter I have the option of paying a little money to comment, with a nice filtering option for non-paying commenters, maybe the default?

Do all the comments seem to agree with each other? Creation of a microcosm of like-minded views?

Nope. Especially on controversial topics (such as anything regarding BP), there are some quite heated arguments.

Politics threads do tend to clique somewhat though. I tend to read the comments on those less though :).

This isn't a particularly surprising outcome.

I think the problem they're facing is twofold:

1) There's lots of news content available for free.

2) Very few people actually need the news. I can think of maybe two situations in my entire life when I gained information that was personally relevant from following the news (and this is despite being somewhat of a news junkie). What people need is entertainment, and the internet provides almost unlimited amounts of that for free.

It's an interesting experiment (and I salute Rupert for trying it) but I really don't see what the value proposition is for subscribers to a mainstream newspaper.

Complete, non-sequiter, but PG reads the Providence Journal?

Just shocked me since I lived in La Prov for 3 years. I haven't thought about the Providence Journal for years.

Is this some kind of subtle ploy to prove to the government that the BBC has an unfair advantage?

I think we need to see data. Those seem to be merely opinions.

I think so too is a bit early to tell. Give it a year. The Times is either sinking or swimming.

I can see this working. For example they could publish some very exclusive stories, engage in some PR and then people would subscribe. They could increase their level of journalism above all other newspapers, be truly independent and then people might see value and subscribe.

If however they continue as they have been, meh, they just another copycat, reproducing the same news as all other newspapers, hence it is a no brainer that no one would pay for it.

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