The Clare People Website Fees?

CptSternn

Has anyone else notice The Clare People newspaper website has been replaced with a pay-per-view website in the UK that you now have to pay €95 a year to access (or €2 an issue)?

I rarely buy any newspapers as I get all of my information online, but do occasionally check the local newspaper websites to see what headlines they are running. I was surprised to find you can no longer see any of The Clare People, it is a 100% pay website now that costs just as much online (€2 an issue) as it does to pick it up in the shop.

I wonder how long until The Clare Champion follows them down that path?

It's a bit of a let down that they are now selling something that was free, but not totally unexpected all things considered. Looking at the URL you are redirected to we can see that they outsourced their IT work to the UK as well. So much for the people of Clare working at The Clare People!

It's kinda funny considering this weeks edition cover story was all about how the council and community can work together to bring more jobs to Clare.

Ah well, we still have the Champion and the Courier for now at least!

Gregor Samsa

All newspapers are going to go down the subscription or micro payment route - they need to make money somehow, and advertising alone isn't cutting it. The question is, how are they going to add value to make that payment worth it? At the moment, a lot of them are afraid to make the jump, because they don't want to be first, but once Murdoch's News Corp does it (and he's on the record as saying he will, once he figures out the best way of doing it), then everyone else will follow.

But charging the same price as the paper edition certainly isn't such a hot idea. I work as a Web Developer, so I'm fully aware that there are massive costs associated with online delivery, but still 2 euro for access to a handful of articles a week seems too much.

As for outsourcing to a UK company - there's a lot more to a web subscription newspaper than just coding some HTML. There's 2 small web design companies in Clare, and a few freelancers. Both the companies (and the freelancers that I know of) are great at what they do, but providing payment processing, subscription tracking, fraud prevention, customer service and all the rest of it - not to mention the publishing system - is a pretty specialist job that would be out of their league.

Personally, I work for a major multinational ecommerce outsourcing company (US company, but has a fairly big operation in Clare), and there's only a handful of companies in the world that do what we do - and I'd say it's the same for the online newspaper publishing industry.

Also, I hate they way they've made a "virtual newspaper", laid out exactly the same way as the print edition, with cheesy page flips and everything. Rule number one of web design is that what works in print is not the same as what works on the web. Now, tablets such as the iPad change that a little bit (the way you hold and interact with a tablet is somewhat close to how you do so with a book or magazine, but still, there are differences), but for PCs or phones, you need to customise your delivery and interaction for the device in question. No way I'd pay 95 euro a year to virtually flip pages and have to click in to zoom onto areas of a page just so I can read the poorly formatted text.

dr.fuzzenstein

Online papers are certainly the way forward, but charging the same as for the paper edition is lunacy.
Putting out a paper requires massive infrastructure, from paper to printing to delivering, by putting out an online edition they are making massive savings.
I predict that their new price will last until someone at the paper realises they're getting about zero subscriptions and then they'll hopefully have the good sense to change their pricing structure.
Also, there are many online news sources that are free, so if I'm browsing during my break and I only have 10 minutes I won't pay E2.
All papers will eventually move mostly online, but it remains to be seen if the public is willing to pay up for it, especially the same price as the paper edition.
A lot of online papers will get a lot of revenue from advertising, so that could become their main income.
The Clare People price will come down, remember how long paid parking in Shannon lasted?

tricky D

Basic edition - free.
More features - pay.

simples

Shapey Fiend

Nothing is simple in the online news space. Online advertising prices have collapsed in the last few years you aren't going to be paying a staff off of it.

Paper advertising rates have dropped a lot in recent years as well. And paper and ink is getting incredibly expensive so things are bound to go digital eventually.

There's no easy money in that space so I'd say 2euro isn't incredibly unreasonable. It's not like the New York Times where you can find the stuff reprinted in hundreds of other papers so even if Murdoch puts it behind a paywall you can find all the same writing on google if you know where to look.

Going forward things these places are going to have to manage on skeletal staffs.. I just hope to god things like that don't go away because while national news is always well covered online local stuff definitely isn't. Clare Herald had a stab at it but still only managed to cover a fraction of what the two newspapers do.

Lady Chatterton

There seems to be a huge amount of changes going on at the paper recently. There have been a lot of lay-offs and redundancies. However, the departure of their editor will be a massive loss to them.

I would imagine the Clare People probably felt they couldn't afford to continue offering free material on line. I hope that the Clare People get through this rough patch as it is good for the county to have two newspapers IMO.

invpat

MrsD007 wrote: »

There seems to be a huge amount of changes going on at the paper recently. There have been a lot of lay-offs and redundancies. However, the departure of their editor will be a massive loss to them.

I would imagine the Clare People probably felt they couldn't afford to continue offering free material on line. I hope that the Clare People get through this rough patch as it is good for the county to have two newspapers IMO.

When did he depart

Tommy Murphy

invpat wrote: »

When did he depart

Roughly about six weeks ago. Has been replaced by some fella called Emmet Moloney. Total staff reduced to about 14 inclusive of every sector in the company.

Lady Chatterton

invpat wrote: »

When did he depart

There was piece in the paper a few weeks ago.

invpat

MrsD007 wrote: »

There was piece in the paper a few weeks ago.

Wasnt he a co founder of the paper and presumably a share holder.

Lady Chatterton

invpat wrote: »

Wasnt he a co founder of the paper and presumably a share holder.

The newspaper was set up by Sean Lyne and Domhall Slattery back in 2005 but they head hunted the editor from an rival publication at the time

invpat

MrsD007 wrote: »

The newspaper was set up by Sean Lyne and Domhall Slattery back in 2005 but they head hunted the editor from an rival publication at the time

On his Linkedin profile he describes himself as a co founder.Was it a voluntary departure

Lady Chatterton

invpat wrote: »

On his Linkedin profile he describes himself as a co founder.Was it a voluntary departure

According to the paper the editor resigned to pursue other media interests.

PARKHEAD67

MrsD007 wrote: »

The newspaper was set up by Sean Lyne and Domhall Slattery back in 2005 but they head hunted the editor from an rival publication at the time

There were always Lynes photographed in the "look at me- photo section".Now I know why:rolleyes:.Anyway, no one will pay to look at this thing on the internet.Jeebus.

callaway92

Not creating a thread for it, but Clare People is gone as-of-today

https://twitter.com/clarepeople/status/1161240582846582785

finbarrk

I bought it this morning.

callaway92

finbarrk wrote: »

I bought it this morning.

Congrats

Today was the last day as per the screenshot