What's happened to The Times website today?

[moorfield]

FFS it looks like they're going to start charging!

[MarillionFan]

FFS it looks like they're going to start charging!

They don't

www.thesun.co.uk

HTH

[Mich the Tester]

FFS it looks like they're going to start charging!

As someone who's read the Times almost every day for nearly 20 years I can't say it's a great loss. The Times is frankly dross these days, so I'll find something else.

[NotAllThere]

I already have a subscription to the electronic version of the newspaper, so couldn't care less.

[swamp]

As someone who's read the Times almost every day for nearly 20 years I can't say it's a great loss. The Times is frankly dross these days, so I'll find something else.

WHS.

It will take t'internet masses approximately 5 seconds to go to the Telegraph or Guardian instead.

[HairyArsedBloke]

I had a subscription to the Times Online one year when I was living abroad. What a waste that was. They kept having these idiotic floating ads that were a bastard to find the close button. The site was nearly unusable. I stopped going to the site before my sub was up and I never renewed it.

I cannot see this working in the UK. There are far too many non-charging sites at the moment for it to gain a hold. The Times has no USP, like the FT or the SJ, for it to ever work. I find the updates less frequent that the other newspaper sites.

[dang65]

I think The Times' belief is that the other newspapers will soon follow suit, even if they are mostly saying they won't at the moment. Also, I suppose it's better from their point of view to have a few thousand paying subscribers than to have a couple of million people reading occasional articles for free. It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out.

I'm not really sure that any newspaper is worth regular subscription these days. I'll buy one occasionally if I'm travelling, and I'll read free ones in hotels or waiting rooms, but I can't remember when I last bought a newspaper every day. Sometime in the early 90s I think.

What's happened with the web - with good blogs and independent news sites and so on - is that the kind of content which used to be almost unique to newspapers is now absolutely everywhere and is at least as good in quality, and often far better because it is independent and unrestricted.

The only way the newspapers could hope to hold us to ransom is if absolutely all of them starved us of news unless we pay. And with so many other sources of news now - 24hr TV news channels, overseas newspapers, free papers, and just people gassing on the web - I don't see how that can ever happen.

Like the music business, they need something unique to sell us, which we can't just get for free anyway. The film industry still has this with the cinema experience, and so does live music, but the newspapers will have to get massively more radical if people are going to pay to read what they say. They're going to have to live up to their self-image of being professional writers and investigative journalists, which just hasn't been evident for years really. It's just celebrity scandal and whistleblowers handing over a stack of emails or a database of MP's expenses claims. There's no unique skill to it, is there?

[Moscow Mule]

The Times starts nailing it's own coffin

Potentially.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8588432.stm

I don't read enough of the Times to buy a subscription & it's very rarely they report something exclusively.

It's not clear if you'll get a few bits and bobs without paying, a-la the FT but I expect I'll be getting my news from somewhere else...

[wurzel]

Is it my imagination or is The Times about the most pro Labour rag at the moment? I've read it a few times recently and I get the impression they are somewhat reluctant to stick the knife in where all the other papers are having a go. Other than that I find it a real yawn, though the Sunday Times is a good read.
Personally I prefer the Telegraph but if that's not available, I'd have the Independent or the Guardian over the Times any day - they at least have strong opinions and are not afraid to voice them.

[NotAllThere]

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