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DC Thomson's newspapers now partly 'offline'
Reproduced with kind permission of Stuart Winton from his blog on Planet Politics For those interested in the online newspaper paywall debate and News International's decision to charge for access to the Times and Sunday Times, recent developments in the DC Thomson stable do not augur well for free content in the Scottish context. Although the online content of DCT's newspapers has always been fairly limited - generally half a dozen or so of the major news articles and the letters page - two of its titles have more or less totally discontinued their internet presence. Today the Sunday Post has been reduced to brief 'tasters' of the major news and sport pieces, and the rest of the site is essentially permanent information about the title such as contact details. Likewise, Dundee's Evening Telegraph has for the past week or two carried only brief tasters for its major stories. Thus two of DCT's three newspaper titles have effectively disappeared from the internet. Interestingly, however, the Courier has recently launched a shiny new website, and although its content is still fairly limited it certainly seems to have more material overall, but since it can take well over a minute to load the frontpage on my netbook to that extent it represents a retrograde step for me. And the archive from the old site seems to have disappeared as well, which is not good news for a Dundee-based blogger! Thus for web watchers DCT's recent online moves represent something of a paradox, but in the round it doesn't seem encouraging news for those seeking free online content. And there's not even a sniff of a paywall, so for two of DCT's titles at least it seems to be a case of buying the newspaper or nothing. Of course, the publishing group's online presence had always seemed very tentative even compared to many very small and local newspaper titles, and thus its recent retreat may not be particularly instructive as regards Scotland as a whole. But perhaps internet history will judge DCT's online strategy to have been more commercially astute than newspaper publishing generally. Due to problems with spam only SalfordOnline members can now leave comments. Becoming a member of SalfordOnline only takes a minute, just hit the red Join Us button at the top right hand side of the page to create your Personal account. |
