http://doingwords.disqus.com/enSat, 26 Sep 2009 00:08:35 -0000http://doingwords.com/2009/09/25/crikey-im-coming-back/#comment-17412005<p>Thanks Bill, really good point about the price of print newspaper <br>subs, they have been very low for a long time and always being offered <br>with discounts. I think/hope the future of long-form investigative <br>journalism is in weekly/monthly print magazines and the video podcast <br>format.</p><p>For the regular daily news, I would like to be able to subscribe to <br>the news agencies directly and just cut out the middle man. I can <br>probably assemble my own daily news much more efficiently with a <br>recommendation algorithm and crowd-sourced tagging/rating. And at <br>lower cost than Rupert does by paying a journalist to sit at a news <br>desk.</p>alan jonesSat, 26 Sep 2009 00:08:35 -0000http://doingwords.com/2009/09/25/crikey-im-coming-back/#comment-17400670<p>If I was still living in Australia, I'd subscribe to Crikey. It's worth it. I'd think about the AFR too, even though its pricey.</p><p>I don't think you can say the same about any of the big metro newspaper websites though - in Australia, New Zealand or anywhere else for that matter.</p><p>While they do have some decent journalism, the things that newspapers are best at, the long-form well-researched stories, don't translate well to the internet. It's so much easier to read that material in a printed paper.</p><p>And it's usually cheaper too. For some reason, print subscriptions typically sell for less than online ones.</p><p>Given most of the material is undifferentiated. And the bulk of international material is available elsewhere, the metro papers will need to invest a lot of money hiring more journalists to dig out relevant local stories if they want to make themselves attractive to digital subscribers. That's unlikely to happen given the current mindset.</p>billbennettFri, 25 Sep 2009 18:21:01 -0000