The Telegraph's online news site was my go-to as a counterpoint to the near ubiquity of the BBC here in UK. I was perfectly happy with The Telegraph, and would put up with attention grabbing adverts, advertorials, promotional features, because the news I wanted to read was free.
Today, The Telegraph online news service introduced a 'Premium' service, asking £2 per week for access to this 'Premium content'. At first glance, it seems that anyone with an opinion, or with a sense of humour, or even simple story telling chops has been put behind this pay-wall.
Flat news is important, and can be glanced over to keep abreast of happenings. For those subjects about which I feel a deeper level of interest, I want to know what other people think, I want to be entertained, and I want to have my views challenged. All of this, on The Telegraph, is now behind the pay-wall.
I should mention that the adverts, advertorials and promotional features are still there.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox, an inferior browser with a quirky attitude to hyperlinks, purely in an attempt to remove the epidemic of almost full-screen automatically placed ads. I was fed up of scrolling multiple times to get to the meat of the articles in pages full of inappropriate, repetitive, invasive ads.
The Telegraph's paid-for apps for phone and tablet also never appealed to me. Perhaps because most of the content was available for free through the online web service. They are marginally more appealing now, but only because the online experience is now unpleasant.
Sure, I could spend £2 a week to 'unlock' Premium content, or I could go the whole-hog and drop £6 a week on Premium with Digital - and have the same content nicely arranged, with no ads in a swish app. But here's the problem...
I don't want to pay now for something I used to get for free. I'm looking at a Telegraph news page where nearly half of the articles (and 90% of the ones worth reading) are locked. As a non-suscriber, I don't want to be shown everything that I can't have, as a constant reminder that my purse-strings are pulled too tightly. I want to have what Telegraph provided for me for years, for free. If they're not going to do that, I'll go elsewhere. I'm sorry, Graham Norton and Simon Heffer aren't enough to keep me loyal.
What I'll do instead is go to the trouble of configuring Google News with my interests, dig deeper into BBC News, and cherry pick from Huffpost, The Guardian, and more specialist press - all of which are free-to-me.
So sorry Mr Chris Evans (Editor not DJ)... you've lost me, possibly forever. If too many others fail to immediately re-value their Telegraph news feed - by £104 per year, the Telegraph will have created a bigger problem than falling newsprint customers. They'll rapidly fade into online obscurity.
Today, The Telegraph online news service introduced a 'Premium' service, asking £2 per week for access to this 'Premium content'. At first glance, it seems that anyone with an opinion, or with a sense of humour, or even simple story telling chops has been put behind this pay-wall.
Flat news is important, and can be glanced over to keep abreast of happenings. For those subjects about which I feel a deeper level of interest, I want to know what other people think, I want to be entertained, and I want to have my views challenged. All of this, on The Telegraph, is now behind the pay-wall.
I should mention that the adverts, advertorials and promotional features are still there.
I recently switched from Chrome to Firefox, an inferior browser with a quirky attitude to hyperlinks, purely in an attempt to remove the epidemic of almost full-screen automatically placed ads. I was fed up of scrolling multiple times to get to the meat of the articles in pages full of inappropriate, repetitive, invasive ads.
The Telegraph's paid-for apps for phone and tablet also never appealed to me. Perhaps because most of the content was available for free through the online web service. They are marginally more appealing now, but only because the online experience is now unpleasant.
Sure, I could spend £2 a week to 'unlock' Premium content, or I could go the whole-hog and drop £6 a week on Premium with Digital - and have the same content nicely arranged, with no ads in a swish app. But here's the problem...
I don't want to pay now for something I used to get for free. I'm looking at a Telegraph news page where nearly half of the articles (and 90% of the ones worth reading) are locked. As a non-suscriber, I don't want to be shown everything that I can't have, as a constant reminder that my purse-strings are pulled too tightly. I want to have what Telegraph provided for me for years, for free. If they're not going to do that, I'll go elsewhere. I'm sorry, Graham Norton and Simon Heffer aren't enough to keep me loyal.
What I'll do instead is go to the trouble of configuring Google News with my interests, dig deeper into BBC News, and cherry pick from Huffpost, The Guardian, and more specialist press - all of which are free-to-me.
So sorry Mr Chris Evans (Editor not DJ)... you've lost me, possibly forever. If too many others fail to immediately re-value their Telegraph news feed - by £104 per year, the Telegraph will have created a bigger problem than falling newsprint customers. They'll rapidly fade into online obscurity.
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