The Day Of Reckoning Comes To The Daily
Would you look at that screen grab, no sooner had we hit on The Daily this morning when we were met with the following subscription screen showing up. Seven days to go until D-Day for The Daily. Are you going to sign up?
It will cost you 99 cents per week in the US, it’s not yet available in the UK, although the ‘best value’ deal is the $39.95 a year rate.
News Corp are hoping there are going to be a lot of subscriptions taken out in a few days time, as the free period comes to an end. They have hired over 100 journalists to write for The Daily and obviously they need some income.
I know many folk are reluctant to pay for news on the internet, but you have to remember that someone has sat down and written it and they deserve to be paid. The dark days of writing for nothing, are hopefully coming to an end and this will mean for the reader that quality will prevail.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
3 Comments
Gerard Brandon
I read with interest this article and only decided to reply when I read your comment
Ordinarily I agree that no one wants to write for nothing and there is a difference between news and opinion where everyone can write their opinion in their daily blog or tweet which is universally accepted as being personal and as such is never likely to be a paid for service.
However the idea that “The Daily” is likely to roll back free press is bordering on ludicrous. Just because 100 journalists get paid does not make me want to buy their corporate structured news output. The internet has changed the format of accessing News to where news aggregated by services from the likes of Storyful easily surpass a limited view of a few journalists looking to please everyone.
As net readers we are seeking to find subjects rather than end to end content covering the entire world of events. We link from one article to another unrelated opinion or article from another writer across the net and not confined to the utterances of a few.
I am not saying that there are not going to be subscribers, but unless it comes with a pedigree of the likes of the WSJ or NY Times it is hardly likely to draw a vast base of continuous readership following.
News International represents a dying institution, not over night, but inevitably losing market share until quality suffers through cost cutting and its circulated online and offline media news gets swallowed up by readers choice of one click away to alternatives.
By all means writers have a right to be paid. The question is who is likely to step up and pay them. The journalist world is changing and those who don’t change with it will go the way of the Dinosaurs.
Joanne Carter
Many thanks for your comments Gerard – shall we take this discussion over to our new Forums – that would be a nice place to chat. Joanne
Gerard Brandon
By all means.