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.

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.

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?

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.

The subscription model just doesn’t seem to work.

Why do you think the Times got ahead of the Independent online?

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