‘Hi, you’re hysterical and biased, please subscribe to the NBR’
Thu, Jul 16, 2009
The NBR sent an email this afternoon to its email subscribers telling us we would have the opportunity as of tomorrow morning to subscribe to extra special paid-for online content.
These selected, top stories will be aimed at providing you high-quality, original, useful material you will not read anywhere else. And they will be relevant to you as a time poor business person. They will add a new quality dimension to business reporting in New Zealand.
We will be offering you an introductory subscription rate for access to this exclusive content for $89 (normal rate $149). This will allow you automatic access to all Subscriber Only Content for the next six months. The cost is a little more than 80c a day and I promise you it will be one investment you won’t regret.
I expect about 20 per cent of our web news to be Subscriber Only Content. The exact ratio will vary as we will be using the category for only the best news stories, scoops and commentary pieces that we post on any one day. Besides the serious issues of the moment the content will include large doses of satire and goings on uncovered by our nosey Private Bin reporters.
I wish NBR luck charging for content and I’ll be interested to see how they manage it. I’m all for experimenting with business models - especially if we share the results – and I understand the need to figure out how to monetise online content.
But it’s perhaps not the best idea to send me (ahem, a blogger) an email that contains the following paragraphs:
And to add to the madness it has been the aggregators that have profited the most from the supply of that free news copy. Worse still the model has spawned a huge band of amateur, untrained, unqualified bloggers who have swarmed over the internet pouring out columns of unsubstantiated “facts” and hysterical opinion.
Most of these “citizen journalists” don’t have access to decision makers and are infamous for their biased and inaccurate reporting on almost any subject under the sun (while invariably criticising professional news coverage whose original material they depend on to base their diatribes).
Thanks for the free generic insult, NBR, but no, I’ll pass on the subscription offer just now.
(And I hope you appreciate the way I’ve respectfully not linked to your website from my blog.)
Additionally, NBR are very happy to source their information from bloggers, quoting them frequently as their source in stories.
Quite so.
I just figured out that online subscription deal is exceptionally bad value compared to the print subscription deal.
Charging more online than for the print edition (in relative terms) is a strategy some newspapers are adopting to force their readers to buy the paper edition rather than read online.
That’s one approach to business I suppose. I don’t think it will work.
cheers
Bernard
@Bill @Bernard Yep, I’ve seen it elsewhere. I don’t think it will work either. Ach, good on them for trying, I suppose. But best not irritate your potential audience in the first instance.
decimated newsrooms
“The alternative is newsrooms decimated to the point of processing public relations handouts or unedited government propaganda from their fully staffed team of spin doctors.”
Is this opposed to NZPA, Fairfax and APN plagerising the releases the spin doctors send out and putting their own names on them? Or does the public need a decrepit egotistical editor telling them what is and is not news?
citizen journalism
“Most of these “citizen journalists” don’t have access to decision makers and are infamous for their biased and inaccurate reporting on almost any subject under the sun (while invariably criticising professional news coverage whose original material they depend on to base their diatribes). ”
Interesting how they slate citizen journalists, bloggers and Spin doctors. Where do the majority of their own news stories originate from?
And why are they opposed to them when they allow users to post their own news on “from the horses mouth”, which surely is another angle on citizen journalism?
we posted their own newsletter on nbr.co.nz to show the absolute contradiction they are.
I am reminded that I wrote a 1500 word piece on sustainable business for the NBR back in 2004 and didn’t get paid for it…hmmm.
But seriously over the last 3 years all the best financial journalism has come from bloggers, many of whom are ex-market players who actually understand what they are writing about.
Of course we don’t all have the ear of decision makers but perhaps that is the point of being independent.
Very droll.