Only kind of related to TS but thinking somebody might have had a similar experience. My friend has been using the subscriber service on the Herald Sun website and has been using LiveHQ etc. He signed up 2 weeks before the season started and received his two month free pass. But has still been able to have full access on the website, including live SC scores, and this is still the case today. Could there possibly be a glitch? I don't exactly want to shed light on something that could effectively screw over a whole bunch of people, but in reality, the 'extra content' behind the paywall isn't worth the money that is being asked of it. I think its funny that he has still been using all of the services for free even though his free pass expired nearly 2 months ago. Any similar experiences?
Yep, same here H_Dons. I signed up round 1... There have been some articles that I've been interested in that I've used the login for, but otherwise it's just the live SC scoring (and we all know that's subject to change a lot during the game anyway).
What a joke. And they think paywalls will save newspapers by giving them extra revenue. Not if they aren't policed. That said, its only Rupert Murdoch you are stealing from - thus really its like stealing money from the grinch - so my attitude would be to continue doing so until they pick up on it.
Still using mine aswell, although i did get an email late last weeks saying it would expire in 5 days and saying for $1 a day for next month i could keep my "registration". Think id rather just sign up with new email address.
Free passes expire at end of month. I will be signing up with a new e-mail address in next two weeks to try and get another 2 months free.
And the articles that are behind the 'paywall' are either gossip rubbish or reports that can be found on other free websites. (AFL.com.au) And yes if they ever do send an email such as the one you got, StKildaThunda, email addresses take minutes to create. Find it quite funny to be honest...simple technical error but ssshhhhh don't tell anyone
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They will kick this thing over to no free trials at some stage - sad to see the once-great Fairfax going the same way, but such is the world we live in.
Yep, mine has been in use for over 3 months. It's gold to have but wouldn't think of paying for it...
Its all part of the strategy. First they give you a taste of whats on offer. They allow you to use it for free for a while so that you get to like it - rely on it maybe. They also get you used to the idea of having to sign up for the service and usernames and passwords etc. Once they think they have people hooked then after a while they will stop the free access. If you haven't signed up for the free access (and why wouldn't you),then you can still read the full article. Just copy the headline. Past it into Google. Select the first result it brings up and bingo, the full article.
Sooner or later it will probably not work in Google either. But unless they put the wall up on all their sites, you can still get the content via the Courier Mail or Daily Telegraph or the Adelaide Now site, etc. I think Herald-Sun/The Australian are much more in the real world than many of us would care to know, and they have smelled the writing on the wall for far longer than Fairfax. First in sometimes brings with it pain, but here first in clearly comes with all the benefits of entering a market and understanding a market before the main competitor. Fairfax - if they could have - may have been able to differentiate themselves from the competition by the quality of their writing. They generally don't write fluff articles no matter how much John Birmingham might want to send up the viewing public. Can't see how they will keep the quality without the staff though. And without the quality, they just become a left-wing trash version of the right-wing trash Herald-Sun. And tabloid to boot. I dunno, I'm not in the industry, but I reckon a damn shame the lot of it.
If I've learnt one lesson in life (and I'm not sure that I have), it's that space abhors a vacuum. Vale Old Media. Hooray New Media.
I have studied media at uni for the past 4 years and the writing has been on the wall for quite some time. Academics had expected paywall's to be trialed and experimented with years ago. The fact that less journalists will be working on less content...it may not be a bad thing to begin with as long as the boardroom situation doesn't change (rhineheart surely won't be allowed to have editorial influence). The real concern will be when newspapers end circulation altogether, and then have to fight for readership over the Internet against popular culture. From what I've learnt so far, to be blunt, it's just another step in the dumbing down of the general population. Enjoy the ride!
<blockquote>Quote from Lucas on June 19, 2012, 22:37 Sooner or later it will probably not work in Google either. But unless they put the wall up on all their sites, you can still get the content via the Courier Mail or Daily Telegraph or the Adelaide Now site, etc. I think Herald-Sun/The Australian are much more in the real world than many of us would care to know, and they have smelled the writing on the wall for far longer than Fairfax. First in sometimes brings with it pain, but here first in clearly comes with all the benefits of entering a market and understanding a market before the main competitor. Fairfax - if they could have - may have been able to differentiate themselves from the competition by the quality of their writing. They generally don't write fluff articles no matter how much John Birmingham might want to send up the viewing public. Can't see how they will keep the quality without the staff though. And without the quality, they just become a left-wing trash version of the right-wing trash Herald-Sun. And tabloid to boot. I dunno, I'm not in the industry, but I reckon a damn shame the lot of it.</blockquote> That's well written and I roughly agree with you - I think Fairfax is basically done and dusted as the entity it was for decades because of Rinehart, and I think the left-leaning crowd (of which I am one) will turn elsewhere for their media content once Gina gets control (which she will). The whole thing is sad but really these newspapers are a relic of a bygone era - a shame because Fairfax is really part of the fabric of Australian society, but that will go and something different will arise in its place. The "cafe-latte lefty" city set catered to by people like David Marr just won't read a newspaper controlled by Rinehart - I don't really see much of an impact on sporting coverage, and in fact I probably envision actually more sport coverage, especially football, because as Marx said it is the opiate of the masses and we all like to be high. A high % of the population reads the newspaper from backwards first and a lot will pay for their sport-info fix. Fairfax will thus have less political coverage (and the little there will be right-leaning), more chick-stuff like celebrity guff and more sporting coverage to rope in the blokes. If you think you won't pay for it and that most wont, come back in 20 years after the reading population has been "educated" into paying for it and talk to me then, because I think by that time most will.
My friends think I'm crazy reading the paper backwards, then again they think its strange I read them in the first place. I think what Lucas says is true. You can't have a quality newspaper without quality staff. It's just going to be tabloid junk now, like that other mob. Imo, sports fans are slowly moving away from traditional big media, with the internet and the advent of blogs and their evolution (TS, good example) you're going to see more people go for their news elsewhere. What will be interesting if these bloggers start becoming first point of contact, over traditional journos.
Absolutely agree with the "quality staff plays a big part in quality content" opinion. I was a newspaper journo with Fairfax for 6 years (after working at another paper for around 3 straight after getting out of uni) ... and even then, back around 2002-2003 you could see there were major problems at the company. The worst thing was that they were unwilling to invest in talent or quality when it came to editorial staff, and they were hugely averse to the potential of technology and the opportunities it could bring. They always talked about how they could harness online to do this and that, but never seemed to want to risk their hard-earned to do it. This was a problem I saw right though my time at Fairfax - there was no willingness to invest in quality - be it people, technology, etc. And this is when times were, for newspapers at least, not as challenging as they are now. I'm not saying that if they had invested it would've changed things entirely, but it might have made a bit of a difference or perhaps even laid the groundwork towards some level of success. Unfortunately the leadership and management of the company was - dare I say it - absolutely "rabbit in the headlights" stunned and not able to get things done. H-Dons - Agree heavily with what you've said as well. John Birmingham wrote a very interesting article in Fairfax yesterday basically with the contentious point that consumers are at least partially to blame in many ways because they don't want to read "news" anymore - or at the very least the important things, analysis, etc they should - but want to read trash, fluff and inconsequential pap about who is sleeping with who, which reality show did what and which useless movie/TV star was found topless/bottomless/laying in a gutter. We were always taught that there were two types of stories - the stories people want to know, and the stories they NEED to know. And that the latter is just as important as the former. Unfortunately so many traditional media outlets actually don't believe there is an audience for serious news and analysis and instead just aim for the lowest common denominator. Thing is - there is an audience for good quality serious news and analysis as long as it is presented well, is understandable and creates discussion and debate. What Mr Birmingham contends is not entirely true. It is sad to see so-called news outlets offer up the shit they do as news, and then argue its what the readers want. It is a shit argument and one which the media outlets use to justify their failure to actually devote time, effort and resources to covering the real news in a way that engages people. They haven't responded to changing audience tastes before, and haven't adapted to technology either. I don't hold my breath that either News Limited or Fairfax will do so successfully now. And while the Fairfax job losses are big, there's rumours 1500 people will lose their jobs at News Limited. Job losses = less quality content = less readers/subscribers to online passes = less money = more job losses as companies try to stay viable. It is a vicious circle. Just happy that I've been out of the industry for almost 10 years and am working elsewhere.
Couldn't agree more chris88, and with News Limited, while they will go through the same downsizing as Fairfax, the fact that Rupert has moved his corporation's reliance away from newspapers means that News Limited will still thrive, albeit over different mediums. I forget the person's name unfortunately, but I was watching a report on tv (ABC) about a man who tried to tell the CEO of Fairfax that one day their golden publication the classifieds would become obsolete in the near future. The CEO (who is still the current CEO) laughed at him and sent him packing - that was only 8 years ago! It's just funny watching all this happen when years ago I was told that this would happen, it just didn't look close to happening at the time, but now change is here. I want to eventually become involved in journalism, but at this stage I'll be happy to stick with Public Relations and Advertising and try to work my way across in years to come...just doesn't seem like a stable industry at the moment.