Fairfax Media upgrades online metro mastheads
Fairfax Media has upgraded its online metro titles’ mastheads.
Effective from mid-December, smh.com.au, Theage.com.au, brisbanetimes.com.au and watoday.com.au will see new features added and the sites revamped to make them easier to use.
Users will be able to access ‘member’s only’ content, features and services with Fairfax, and access data to offer more relevant advertising to clients.
Jane Huxley, Fairfax Metro Media’s digital publisher said: “This is part of the ongoing execution of our strategy. Aggregating audiences around independent quality journalism, understanding what those audiences want, and then delivering on those needs, not only to them, but to our advertisers.”
Cool, nice work! But I still ain’t paying…..
Yes, but will they get rid of auto-play?
Fairfax are trying to get users to log in so they can collect data on their reading habits, and whatever else can be hoovered up.
I’m not paying for news with cash or my privacy, especially when there are so many excellent alternatives that charge me neither.
@News Reader – You are exactly the reason why major publishers of quality news have to make cuts around journalism.
Why do you not think you shouldn’t pay either via cash or giving some basic personal info?
News is a commodity just like anything else you consume. You dont just walk into Coles and expect to get food for free!
@Alex –
I’m killing Fairfax and Newscorp??? Wow, I feel mighty powerful now.
I’d say they killed themselves ten years ago when they put their fingers in their ears and yelled, “This is not happening!”
It’s too late now, both have a rep for shoddy, biased, PR based reportage and the minnows (such as Mumbrella – thanks, Tim. Awesome site, read it every day) are swarming.
@news reader You miss my point…..you don’t get something for nothing. The ‘excellent alternatives’ that you refer to can’t be running sustainable businesses. How long will they last for?
I’m not saying that Fairfax and News Corp are offering particularly good products to market, but at the end of the day, good journalism costs cash to produce and we should support the industry by putting our hands in our pockets or at least giving away our name and date of birthday in exchange!
The ABC could really capitalise on all these digital walls if they simplified their homepage and made it a one stop news shop, like the BBC site.
Plus it would really annoy the News Ltd folk.
@Alex
But they don’t just want my name and birthdate. They want my browsing habits. My employer’s name. My income. My address, phone number, email and the address, phone number and email of my partner. My kids names, and the names of their friends and the names of their friends’ pets. They want it all, and the more they can get, the more valuable it is when they sell it.
My response is adblockerplus, noscript, PHPproxy, PeerBlock, TOR and something to clean out index.dat files every now and then.
It’s sad that we’ve reached this point, with every cooperate dingdong going through our virtual rubbish, but if the government won’t legislate appropriate privacy safe-guards, you just have to take matters into your own hands.
And before anyone says ABC, remember you DO pay for that news coverage. It comes out of your taxes … or don’t you pay those either?
Will jump in here. The Allure blogs (Lifehacker, gizmodo etc) are a favourite of mine, they offer good coverage of the topics and are interesting to read. When they have their yearly optional survey I am glad to participate. Why? I’m impressed by the quality of the blogs that I’ll help out.
It is a two-way street.
Traditional news sources need to prove their content is worth paying. I’d prefer to read the SMH paper. But looking at News Ltd stuff…I wouldn’t pay a cent for crap like that.
Another fan of Allure’s sites here – but they source most of their stories through PR, other blogs or networking. It’s a very lean business model. While they get some great scoops, they do not focus on investigative journalism, which costs money to produce. I don’t think you can compare news mastheads to blogs.
I just wish that the Sydney Morning Herald would provide its readers with some Entertainment articles written in Sydney rather than lifting them all from the Age.
Sharp action at Fairfax. First build a web site that cheapens the brand. Then cover it in deeply annoying commercial action. Then, just to be really sure, ask people to give you personal profiles that will most certainly raise your spam count.
All this from the organisation with a new CEO who thunders on about the ineluctable delicacy and vibrant authority of its editorial product.
Emperor Hywood of the Thousand Year Dynasty, I love your new clothes!!
News and Fairfax are hurting really badly because they are oil tankers: they are worth loads of cash and are very powerful and big. The reason they are hurting is because they are taking too long (in this digital world) to turn and are being out maneuvered by fast, highly nimble, speedboats (vertical digital offerings), which focus on one thing and do that one thing well.
New entrants can also fund their business models by selling ad’s and not having to rely on sub’s. The future will be interesting. New sand Fairfax could fair well. They could both die. Both are a reality in this fragmented media world, which now exists.
Where Google, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIN makes a dollar a traditional business loses one…