The new subscriber-based website of the Waikato Times. Photo: Stuff / Waikato Times
After putting almost all its news online for free for a quarter of a century, Stuff launched subscription-based websites this weekend for its biggest daily papers - The Press, Waikato Times and The Post. Its main news website stuff.co.nz will remain free - but its regional titles could put-up paywalls soon.
"We made some big mistakes as an industry 20 years ago when we made all our content available for free. I don’t think there’s any going back on that - but I still think people will pay for quality journalism,” New Zealand Herald’s Shayne Currie told a journalism conference in 2017.
Two years later the Herald took the plunge and ended the free ride by launching digital subscriptions.
Its much-viewed nzherald.co.nz website was still free but studded with yellow tags marking the ‘premium content’ available only to subscribers.
The Gisborne Herald, Ashburton Guardian and Whakatane Beacon had already started charging readers online.
Business publication NBR had already put up a full online paywall in 2014 and eventually ditched its print edition altogether in 2020.
The Otago Daily Times publisher Allied Press announced a paywall in 2016, telling NBR at the time the newspaper had been "giving away our content free for long enough."
But it was only last September it finally began charging online readers $15 a month.
That left Stuff as the last major publisher not to put up any paywall.
This weekend Stuff launched subscription-based websites for The Dominion Post, The Press and Waikato Times. The name of Wellington-based daily Dominion Post also changed to ‘The Post.'
For the first 16 weeks, subscribers pay $1.99 a week for one of the three sites or $2.99 for all three. After that discount period, the charge will be $5 a week (the same as the Herald Premium Content) or $7.50 a week for all three.
The new websites also offer new daily puzzles and a crossword. Existing subscribers of the three newspapers will get digital access for free. Readers can also get the full digital access and subscribe to the print edition of one of the three dailies for $17.99 a week.
“The masthead sites for The Press, The Post and the Waikato Times will be subscriber-access only. People can have a taste of their content, but to read the stories and consume the whole experience you will need to be a subscriber,” Sinead Boucher told Mediawatch.
Stuff’s main news website stuff.co.nz - which has a monthly audience of around 2m - is still free to use and it still carries much of the content the three metropolitan dailies produce.
What will freeloaders using stuff.co.nz miss out on because people must now pay in those three other locations?
“They won't be missing out on anything that they don't already consume every day. We are specifically creating a new environment with specific focus on subscriber content. The journalism that is specific to different regions and audiences will be a bit more of a ‘lean-back’ experience on the paid for digital sites,” she said.
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Stuff’s top brass have also hinted the focus of the three titles will also change.
“Each masthead will feature sharp journalism reflecting the unique nature of the regions they operate in,” Stuff’s chief content officer Joanna Norris said in a statement last Thursday.
Norris said Stuff’s Wellington newsroom “will set the daily agenda” and focus on national issues as well as local ones.
“The Press and the Waikato Times are fierce champions for their local communities,” said Norris.
Is this a bid to turn The Post into a national title?
“The Post will still be the paper for Wellingtonians and the paper of the capital. Anything you need to know about what's happening in the corridors of power, decisions being made in government or in the public service . . . all those things that affect everybody - The Post will double down on those topics, as they would be interesting to people anywhere in the country,” Sinead Boucher told Mediawatch.
Why put up paywalls now?
The front page of The Dominion Post as its masthead changes to The Post. Photo: Supplied
When their free news sites launched in the late 1990s the hope was huge audiences attracted by free news online would bring newspaper publishers substantial sums from online ads - just like the ‘rivers of gold’ their papers in print enjoyed for decades.
But it didn’t work out like that because online platforms like Google and Facebook got in between the news makers and the news readers and grabbed most of the money.
Audited circulation figures have not been available in the post-Covid period, but prior to 2020, Stuff’s major newspapers were suffering significant decreases in sales year-on-air - often double-digit annual falls in percentage terms.
One month after Sinead Boucher bought the company from its Australian owners in early 2020, Stuff launched a drive to get online readers to support its journalism with donations.
Stuff is also part of a collective effort to secure payment for news content from online platforms Google and Facebook (Meta) but that has yet to bear fruit.
Stuff has also benefited from the Public Interest Journalism Fund which made $55m available over three years to the media from 2020 on a contestable basis. But that is now coming to an end and the government has prioritised funding for RNZ and NZ on Air over the next four years.
“Over the last couple of years, we had a lot of work to do to stand up as an independent business and a lot of investment to make in the right technology and people and capability. We've made those investments and rolled out the right technology to enable us to launch these new digital products,” Sinead Boucher told Mediawatch.
But it’s biggest rival in online news and content has a huge head start.
At its AGM last Wednesday NZME said it now has 113,000 subscribers with digital premium content accounts.
It is not far off its goal set in 2020 of more than 12 percent of the nation’s households subscribing.
It was also part of a strategy to make ‘New Zealand’s Herald’ out of what has historically been an Auckland paper and brand.
It’s no coincidence that the Herald launched heavily discounted subscriptions this week and has recently been running billboards with the slogan: ‘The stuff worth knowing'.
Does putting news behind a paywall reduce its reach?
Not according to Grant McKenzie, the CEO of Allied Press which put up a paywall for the Otago Daily Times six months ago.
“We're seeing significant growth in digital and a slower decline in our print subscribers. So overall it is positive for us,” he said.
“We've actually seen growth in our website traffic and unique visitors are up 10 cents on the prior year. Ironically, we've also seen growth in readership of our print edition. For the December quarter, we're up to 95,000 for the ODT, compared to 93,000 the year before,” he told Mediawatch.
“The reason why we are getting people to pay is the fact that we employ 97 journalists across the South Island. No one else provides the news that we do in our region. And journalism is a cornerstone of democracy. And if we don't have that, that's a real worry for society,” he said.
Regionals to follow suit?
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Stuff also owns six regional mastheads - including the Timaru Herald, Nelson Mail and Manawatū Standard - as well as the Sunday Star Times and Sunday News. These are not affected by the paywall plan - yet.
Will Stuff put the regional paper’s news behind an online paywall too?
“We thought we would focus initially on our three biggest masthead titles and get the product mix right for those and see how people respond and what do we need to tweak. Then we could look to do the regionals and the Sunday (papers) after that,” Boucher told Mediawatch.
Does the launch of digital subscriptions bring forward the time when some Stuff newspapers go out of print and are available only electronically?
“I don't see that. None of us could say how and how much longer newspapers will be in print, but they still have a very long and vibrant future ahead of them. That's based on the demand from our subscribers and our advertisers as well,” she said.
“We've been really pleased with how stable our subscriptions and advertising has been particularly coming through the Covid years. And we're now looking for opportunities to grow further into digital and being able to fund that journalism as well.” she said.
