This morning as I was going through my emails, I received a rude shock. Straits Times Interactive will be charging its readers, STi will no longer be free.
Excerpts from the email:
…We thank you for your interest in the website and would like to inform you about a major change coming to STI in March: After 10 years of giving ST news reports out for free online, STi will begin charging readers to access it.
A subscription will cost S$72 for six months (S$12 a month), or S$120 for a year (S$10 a month). A one-month subscription will cost S$15.
…
From March 15 onwards, the site will become a subscribers-only website.
My very first reaction was, NO, I’ll not pay $10. No way. Why? Let’s take a closer look at the paid service:
1) The entire paper, plus the weekly supplement magazines, are now all available from 6 am onwards on its publication day.
Which is what I’m expecting anyway. How can paid subscribers expect anything less than unrestrictive access to all sections of the paper at the earliest possible time? This, so called “perk” is simply non-valid. It’s a must for any paid subscriptions.
2) A 7 day archive, instead of a 3 day archive previously.
It sounds good to the undiscerning ear but think about - You are paying $10 to $15 a month and have access only to news up to a week ago? STi should in fact offer a minimum of a 1 year archive! Come on, I’m paying. What do you stand to lose by opening up your databases? You will even earn from the repeat impressions of your (old) ads!
3) Ads
Neither the email nor the report online (which you have to login to read, Ridiculous!), paid any attention to this issue. Most paid subscriptions will have those distracting ads removed from pages served to you, but since STi did not address this, which is a feature in its own right, I doubt they will be removed. So that’s subscription for ya, you pay $10 a month to watch those flickering ads. Great deal.
All-in-all, both the email and the report online emphasised on features that are a must of any paid-subscription online news and, in fact, STi doesn’t even bother to make it attractive for anyone to subscribe. They even sounded like we own it to them, like how they have been providing news for free for the past 10 years and that it’s not “tenable” for printed news to be charged while the online version is not.
STi, I tell you, paid subscription with such measly features at $10 month will not work. And I’ll even offer my views for free.
Let’s look at your online readership-base: Singaporeans aboard are your most loyal subscribers. They’ll glady offer you the money. Next up are foreigners interested in Singapore matters. Both of which are mostly fairly affluent and wouldn’t twitch at the cost.
Finally, there is this largest group of readers, most of which already have access to the printed version. The reason why they will need the online version is mainly because they need a digital version of it to work on, or in the less probable case, they don’t have access to the printed version or prefer to read the paper online. The majority, myself included, however, are just casual browsers who will occassionally need the paper. This group of people would pay a cent, they will find even logging-in a chore.
Out of the 280,000 subscribers who are now reading STi for free, I think less than 10,000 will eventually pay for the mediocre service.
I’ve a few suggestions to the paid online newspaper:
1) Make the ads go, if you haven’t already done so. Please.
2) Offer a better archive, at least a year back. This will be a great resource to people doing research, students especially. And you get the additional benefit of increased ad impressions (if you haven’t already killed the ads).
3) Give web-exclusive features, like in-depth reports of news not available in the print addition, further development of news after printing time, much like an addendum, or stock analysis of companies featured in the Money section. Learn from the Economist. I believe your creative team can think up more right? Or you can simply hire me at $15 per hour, I’m cheap.
4) Be more sincere at wooing your potential subscribers. Such an email release is simply… unacceptable. Many online newspaper hate and regret to charge readers, you seemed almost proud to do it.
In fact, I think you shouldn’t even charge readers. Few online newspapers do. Many did and turned back. In fact, looking at the listings of newspapers in Yahoo!SG, only Wall Street Journal require a paid subscription. New York Times only require a free registration. Most of the rest are accessible for free. Oh, Yahoo! needs to change the site summary for STi from 15 March 2005.
Even among online newspaper that charge, nearly all give subscribers of their print edition free access. They see it as offering a complementary service to loyal customers. WSJ, The Economist, Time and NYTimes all do so. In that sense, few Singaporeans, most of whom are already subscribers of ST print edition, will not allow STi to “doublecharge” them.
I see STi marching towards doom, obstinately. With so much history to learn from, since online newspapers, whether paid or unpaid, have existed years before STi launch 10 years ago, I can’t believe that they are still taking the wrong path.