New Irish Times website to debut tomorrow - Breaking news is free & it incorporates video clips
Published November 14th, 2006 in PR in IrelandThe Irish Times are set to debut a new website tomorrow, you can take a tour by following this link and click on the button. It is being launched after extensive customer research, but ultimately to incorporate some of their recent online acquisitions.
It’s still a walled garden approach with premium content, but people will be pleased to see that their breaking news section is free. They are also incorporating news clips in video format which I will be interested to checkout as a premium account holder (I’ll report more about them after I’ve played around with the new site). RSS feeds will also be taking a more prominent spot which pretty much reflects the way things are moving online.
I like the direction the Times are taking. Let’s face it they are making money with their online venture and the approach they are taking reflects the analysis my boss, Padraig McKeown, made:
The Internet will be the medium people turn to for breaking news.
People will tune into broadcast media because it captures the emotion of a story.
Newspapers will continue to be read because they will provide analysis of the event.
The breaking news section should enable them to build their online audience and ultimately make people more familiar with the Irish Times brand. At the end of the day this will help to increase the number of readers of the newspaper.
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(I’m irish, living in the States.)
In the US at the moment, newspapers are in the doldrums. Print editions of newspapers are becoming less and less popular and so advertising revenue is going down. Many say that the growth in online readership of those newspapers will make up for the loss in revenue from print publications. Still, with the wide array of other sources of entertainment and news on the internet many doubt that internet versions of newspapers can prosper. One way out of this is the proposal that online papers become more local, essentially the “hub” of a region. This reminded me of the Irish Times (a paper I read faithfully when I lived in Ireland!). By US standards the entire country of Ireland is a “local” market. I was wondering if you had any info on how profitable the online version of the Irish Times had been, as this would be a useful comparison for newspapers in the US. Has there been a big uptake in online readership? What is the growth rate? How many subscribers are there? I assume advertisements pull in more revenue if the newspaper is subscription based (marketers have more knowledge of target audience)? I remember when I left Ireland the Independent was taking ground from the Times, is that still the case with the online versions of the two papers competing?
Thanks!
David
No stats as such at hand, but I’ll ask around. In terms of print, the Indo is ahead of the Times, but online it’s a different story. The Times aren’t putting as much emphasis on subscription as they used to as they’re making a lot more content free, having even launched a number of blogs recently. Like other online publications though, both the Times and the Indo have realised that classifieds are the honeypot. The Times recently bought MyHome.ie (albeit at an inflated price) and the Indo has launched propertynews.com. Both are complimentary services to their online editions, but effectively help them both establish themselves as hubs of content.
That’s very interesting, especially about the classifieds.
The subscription model just doesn’t seem to work.
Why do you think the Times got ahead of the Independent online?
Funnily enough I think the Times subscription method works. The majority of their online visitors want breaking news, rather than in depth analysis. By making breaking news free, this appeals to the majority of their users, which would also explain the popularity of the Examiner’s breakingnews.ie. There are obviously a number of people that are prepared for the full version on top of that. I would see the introduction of blogs and complimentary services like MyHome.ie as a strategy to upsell the paper in digital format.
The Times are also much clever in leveraging their brand online. Look at the Examiner for example, breakingnews.ie and the Examiner don’t connect in my mind - they’re like two different sides of a coin. The Times however have always positioned their products closely together thanks to the shared url. In essence rather than being on two different sides of a coin, the Times digital content is more like MacDonal’s french fries where the user has a choice of regular (free) or supersize (paid content)
The main reason why the Times got ahead of the Independent in my mind is because of the Indo’s weird free subscription model. Readers have to log in to get the free content. The Irish Times and Examiner’s breaking news format works because the majority of their users want a snapshot of what’s going on. Time is of the essence and logging in to read the story just doesn’t suit.
By all accounts, the Indo are going to introduce blogs and similar content. That suggests that they will do a redesign of their site. They’ve lost first mover advantage so it will be interesting to see whether the complimentary content is a strong enough pull to make visitors return on an ongoing basis.
Thanks. I’d really love some numbers on all that though. (That seems like a dumb move by the examiner.)
By the way, let me get this straight: Irish Times - private company, Indo - part of public company, Examiner - private company?
I always got the impression that the reason the Indo got so far ahead of the Times in its print version was because the Indo became more dumbed down and sensationalist. The Times had that old, serious, venerable feel to it, whereas the Indo really appealed to the masses. What do you think is happening in this regard with the online versions? Is the Times appealing to a broader base of people now?
Had a quick word around and numbers don’t seem to be freely available.
The Indo is streaks ahead in terms of the paper based medium for the reasons you state, however when it comes to the net people are looking for breaking news which is why the Times and the Examiner flourish.
Like the post says:
The Internet will be the medium people turn to for breaking news.
People will tune into broadcast media because it captures the emotion of a story.
Newspapers will continue to be read because they will provide analysis of the event.
As Mike Walsh would say, “Mediums don’t die. The economics just change.”
Plus if its sensationalism that people are after, there’s far more juicy gossip on other sites than the Indo online.
“The Internet will be the medium people turn to for breaking news.”
Yes. I would say though that for a local newspaper to be successful breaking news it would have to be local breaking news. Or, I guess, they could have some kind of feed coming in for non-local breaking news. I don’t know if people would return to the local newspaper site to learn about such non-local breaking news.