Media World
By Catherine O’Mahony
Rupert Murdoch is to make good his promise to start charging for online content at the Times and Sunday Times. Readers will shortly have to pay £1 (€1.17)for a day’s access to the Times, or £2 for a week.
More interesting is the relaunch of the papers’ websites. The new Times.co.uk site is suddenly very user friendly, interesting and full of exclusive content, good pictures and interesting video.
It is a promising start to the paywall concept, though many observers still think will never gain genuine traction.
Meanwhile, the Belfast based Irish News has turned its paywall into an extra business opportunity, by selling the technology package behind it to other news publishers.
Costs for the service start from £465. Paywalls are largely an issue for the ‘quality’ press which, it appears, is becoming a rare commodity.
A story sometimes comes along that exposes any editorial overlap between tabloid and broadsheet – and Ronan Keating’s marriage has proved one.
Naturally it all proved far too great a temptation for the tabloid press to resist. And there was plenty of justification here: these are high profile, attractive people, frequently photographed together, who have gone so far as to sign up for family advertising deals – they are perfect tabloid fodder.
What has been more interesting on this occasion is the behaviour of the so called ‘middle market’ press and the broadsheets and their handling of the story.
The Daily Mail – technically a mid-market – pretty much led the way on the Ronan Keating story, being faster than the red-tops to report seamier details.
Meanwhile, the Irish Independent dropped all claims to any higher moral ground with daily front-page picture-led updates on the unfurling ‘events’ around the marriage.
The Irish Times did not ignore the Keating story, but it has – to date – produced just two stories about the matter – one from its online edition on the day the news of the separation broke, and one from its newspaper edition from the following day.
The article was the top story online for the day. To the Irish Times’ credit, it managed to restrain itself from taking the story further, which may have cost it sales.
Still, if editorial priorities mark the distinction between red top and quality press, the Irish Times just about managed to emerge from this as Ireland’s only proper daily broadsheet.
