Jump to content

Would you pay to read the Shetland Times online?


Recommended Posts

Have just read this in the paper over lunch and looked it up online. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6945320.ece

 

My parents had the Shetland Times sent to them by post all their lives; for a while, when I was younger, they then used to post them on to me. There is no longer enough in the printed paper that is relevant to me for that to be worthwhile; but I have ST Online as my home page and scan it every day to keep up. I would happily pay to do this as it seems I am getting quite a lot of info there for free and someone has to put all those pages together.

 

How do others feel about this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 32
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Guest Anonymous

I would probably be happy to pay a fee to view the ST online, providing it was the full content of the paper, including: Hatched, matched, and dispatched column, Public notices, Classified ads, etc..

The current online content of the ST is good, but not worth a subscription considering, IMO, that the Shetland News generally gives better news coverage.

 

Although there's no doubt that people living in Shetland will continue to want the paper version, there's a helluva lot of exiled Shetlanders, all over the world, who would be delighted with the full paper online on the same day as the paper version is sold.

There may well also be a lot of people living in Shetland who, for reasons like disability, remoteness, etc., might also be happy to buy an online version.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've said this before concerning Shetland Life, and the same applies to Shetland Times. It surely couldn't be an absurd amount of work to simply scan all of the pages of each and put them in a pdf, and sell it as a download. They scanned the property pages for a short time when the current site first started and offered them as part of the freebie, so its very doable.

 

I'd happily pay the cover price for both if I could get them that way, as is shops and me are strangers, so I rarely see either and the Times rarely gets a penny out of me.

 

I would have thought the more online downloads they could sell at cover price the better they'd like it, even if it was at the expense of hardcopy sales. There are no paper, printing, delivery etc expenses, only the wage of one person to scan and upload the mag or paper once, which has to equal more profit per sale.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The reason I put up this thread is that I was taken back to turn over a page in the (London) Times and see the Shetland Times masthead looking up at me (see link in OP).

 

One can get the Times online looking exactly as it does in print for £90 pa – I would very much like to have that, but am as yet unwilling to pay that much when I already pay for the printed paper (and I am not going to do the crossword in bed on my laptop). But as you will have noticed elsewhere, Murdoch is now trying to get Google to limit the number of hits on his newspaper it will allow in any given time without paying – and it may be that we shall soon have to pay for access to online content anyway. I think that’s probably fair enough. I do that with both the Times and the Economist – if I read something in print that I want to share, I look it up online, copy and send it round.

 

I thought that principle tied in with the article to which I originally drew the attention of Shetlinkers – ‘use it or lose it’ situation for Scotland’s small newspapers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share


×
×
  • Create New...