The NZ Herald Paywall is finally here!
It’s finally here and it’s far worse than we hoped for…
..it’s premium, premium and more premium.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the traffic today plummets. By consistently rubbing into peoples face the news they can have and can’t have, the Herald will turn more readers off than subscriptions gained.
The premium content all needs to be in one section to maintain traffic the way Stuff.co.nz has done by clearly marking the shithole that is their Stuff Nation nonsense. Nothing annoys a person more than accidentally clicking on a Stuff Nation story so they’ve done the decent thing and smothered it all into a section you can just skip over.
The Herald needs to do that too or else traffic will go off a cliff. Unfortunately the NZ Herald are so desperate they are using the Premium brand as bait and advertising for their subscription base.
The NZ Herald are hilariously pushing their drive for subscriptions as ‘saving journalism’.
This from the newspaper that empowered Cameron Slater, played an essential role in dirty politics and had a friend of John Key pretend to be a journalist to interview a waitress who had her ponytail pulled by Key.
As for the actual content itself? I have no idea, I’m not paying $5 a week for it and the equation is simple. Is their content worth the same subscription rate as Netflix?
The answer is no.
The winners here will be Radio NZ, TVNZ and Stuff.
I think this will be as successful as the last Census.
In my opinion the cartoons are more of a “premium” standard than the actual news items considered “premium” in today’s NZH. Not that I bothered to read them, but the headings alone were off putting and pathetic. “Premium” indeed … ha ha.
Bye bye NZH and good riddance.
Cheers for alternative news media.
Are Hosking and Hawkesby behind the paywall?
If so, the Wall works better than anything Trump could conceivable build
Spot on MJOLNIR, chuck in all the other one eyed right wing apologists masquerading as jouro’s, I left the Herald a long time ago.
It would appear that most of the so-called ‘Premium’ offerings are the same trash that has been served up previously at no cost, but now you have to pay to see them.
Obviously someone’s idea of attempting to bolster the revenue stream, undoubtedly because “we have to return better profits to our shareholders”.
Sorry NZH, I’ll get my news somewhere else. Exit stage left.
Herald Journalists put the tin cup out to save their jobs.
Don’t make me laugh.
I think there is general consensus that the money the Herald raise for this cause, will be used mostly to subsidise Hosking and Hawkesby to continue to spew their low brow Right wing filth for free all over the bandwidth. A privilege that won’t be extended to any other Herald chancers or staffers. Creating competitive pressure on them to lower themselves to Hosking Hawkesby levels of gutter journalism for the opportunity to be occasionally let outside the pay wall. And maybe, one day if they prove themselves venal enough, also earn a permanent spot outside the Herald paywall.
Jennyhowtoget there : “Don’t make me laugh.”
Every time I see anything about the Herald paywall I laugh.
I might pin it on the kitchen wall: Herald Paywall.
“The winners here will be Radio NZ, TVNZ and Stuff.”
Only in the sense that they may get more traffic. The rest of us will be the losers; not because the Herald is a news site of record (it isn’t), but because those other outlets aren’t either.
RNZ is infested with the woke Left: it’s almost a lost cause now. I note the departure of Guyon Espiner from Morning Report tomorrow. Can’t come soon enough for me, and not just for his irritating smugness over his te reo usage and his “up yours” attitude to critique. I’ve had a gutsful of his failure to apply any analysis at all to the propaganda masquerading as reportage from overseas media outlets. He’s supposed to be a journo: it’s long past time he started acting like one, instead of just as a reporter.
TVNZ: what is it good for?
In fairness to Stuff, it does have some political analysis, and it does run some long-form journalism pieces, but the good stuff is often hard to find, because the site is not well-organised. And I’m not sure that the useful stuff makes up for the amount of dross it posts.
The turning off of comments has not improved the site, at least with regard to the democratic process. Not long after the ChCh shootings, Stuff published this offensive little piece from Hinemoa Elder:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/christchurch-shooting/111582476/wellmeaning-pkeh-you-must-get-out-of-the-way-of-the-muslim-communitys-healing
It was the sort of article that, had it been a pakeha writing about Maori and other brown people, probably wouldn’t have got an airing at all. And if it had, it would have attracted a storm of criticism. But because comments had been turned off, nobody could challenge her assertions. Stuff’s restrictions on reader comments doesn’t bode well for the future of debate about politics and societal issues in this country.
I sent to a relative the link to the Hinemoa Elder article. Here is the response:
“Allah be praised, we have nonsensical ramblings about birds from a fat woman who looks very much like the one the surveillance camera caught robbing my cousin’s dairy.
– Barzan Al Tikriti, former stuff commenter”
Heh! About sums it up
Meantime, here’s what proper news reportage and analysis looks like. For those of you who haven’t seen him before, this guy is always worth a watch:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8rnWIRrpW0