I saw the new look Times and Sunday Times websites with a bunch of bloggers last night. The idea, of course, is that these will be so good that you are gonna have to pay for them. Here’s a vid of The Sunday Times new look (no vid of new The Times website was available last night — but that’s changed now I’ve added it at the bottom of this).
Marvellous. So when are they going to launch? Answer: “very imminently” said a News Corp spokeswoman. Beehive City had heard they were going to launch Monday, but that hasn’t happened. Then we heard it was going to be today. And it may still be today — because very is a good word to add in front of imminently. ++ And, lo, after waking up, I see it is today ++
This, folks, will be the Times Online
Then for “about four weeks” you will be able to lust over both new look sites for free. After that, it will be hands in pocket time – £1 a day, or £2 a week. So ask yourself whether you are prepared to fork out, because The Times and Sunday Times will be available in digital form no other way. Google will only be able to index the home page, and nothing else — and you won’t even be able to see a headline and teaser on any individual story outside the front page.
If a friend sends you a link, and you are not logged in, you’ll be directed to the page that that asks you enter your username and password – or cash.
For that money, the digital newspapers are pretty much all you get. There are no extra Sky videos bundled in (no more than on the current Times Online anyway). Nor is there extra content from other News Corp titles, such as the Wall Street Journal. But the Sunday Times will have weekly vids from Alison Jackson who specialises in funny movies starring lookalikes of famous people.
Tristan Davies, the Sunday Times web supremo, told me there had been no real conversations about ‘bundling’ with other products — just a focus on creating visually rich redesigns that are intended into tempting people into paying up. The only concession to wider News Corp integration is a button on certain TV reviews that allows readers to set their Sky boxes to record shows via the click of a mouse.
We quizzed Danny Finkelstein, a Times columnist, and the man leading the web effort for The Times, on whether he worried about losing influence once his words went behind the pay wall. “I think I will [still] have an impact – Times columnists had impact before the internet came along,” he said, describing the great online giveaway as “ultimately not sustainable”. He argued that if the Times doesn’t get paid for its content, then eventually its journalists won’t get paid either.
Yes, yes, but you can get the news everywhere for free, so why will readers pay? “We are not selling the news,” said Danny. “We are selling The Times and The Sunday Times”. A noble sentiment all right, but surfers, long used to paying nothing for content, and eying up the BBC pages, may not bother to agree.
Of the two sites, The Sunday Times is visually impressive. We were told that Sunday Times journalists won’t be asked to write extra during the week beyond a bit of blogging. Instead between Monday and Saturday the site will endlessly showcase the paper’s interviews, features, reviews etc with the help of a picture carousel (of the kind many sites already have), a string of attractive picture galleries, and other ‘widgets’ such as the ‘interactive culture planner’ – a kind of upmarket calendar with Time Out entries populating every day.
The Times, clearly by necessity more news driven, will have a front page that looks similar to the newspaper today, one that carries far less stories (and advertising) than is the case on Times Online. There will be an emphasis on pix, as you can see from the football action left. Meanwhile, the journalists will be expected to help produce a bit more multimedia to go with those familiar words ‘n’ pictures. Currently featured is a video from the paper’s Ocean Correspondent diving into the BP oil slick. Down there, it turns out, it is murky and, er, black.
Oh, and is there gonna be an iPad version for either site? Well the answer, wait for it, is “in time”.
Now here’s The Times’s video, which I’ve just had sent over to me…give that a play then…
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[...] be found anywhere else. These stars (many of whom speak gushingly about web publishing on a video put out by NI) have all busily ramped up their profiles on social media sites and have a wider rapport with their [...]
“We are not selling the news,” said Danny. “We are selling The Times and The Sunday Times”
And looking at the site, that was the impression I had.
It’s a clean redesign of both sites but that’s about it. I think anyone looking for the future of online journalism may be disappointed as there is nothing here that you haven’t seen before, and maybe even better, for free.