In April 2023 Stuff (the parent company of Stuff.co.nz) launched three new digital news sites. There is now one each for The Post (formerly the Dominion Post), The Press, and the Waikato Times, and the sites feature for the first time the ability to subscribe to a digital news offering:
Stuff launched new digital sites for The Post, The Press and the Waikato Times on Saturday, marking a bold new era and investment into its key heritage mastheads.
The new sites provide a distinctive digital offering, and a new way for subscribers to access award-winning journalism.
The launch of the digital sites also marked the transition of the Dominion Post masthead in Wellington to The Post, in line with the publication’s commitment to reflecting a modern, progressive Aotearoa and serving the country with must-read news from the capital.
“These publications have been at the heart of New Zealand journalism for more than 160 years. Thanks to our subscribers and advertisers, we have been there through every milestone in the development and growth of our country,” Stuff chief executive Sinead Boucher said.
Along with the sites, Stuff on Saturday launched digital subscriptions for the first time in its history, a huge step forward as the company continues to invest in a sustainable future for its journalism.
The journalism produced for the three publications would largely only be accessible to subscribers, while Stuff.co.nz remained the live, lively, vibrant and addictive news site it is today, free to all users, Boucher said.
Stuff chief content officer Joanna Norris said Stuff and the masthead sites complement each other, rather than one being a substitute for the other.
“We know and will encourage our audience to avidly consume Stuff, and to subscribe to one or all of our mastheads,” Norris said.
“Each masthead will feature sharp journalism reflecting the unique nature of the regions they operate in.”
It’s now been about six months since the sites launched, and I’ve been reading the The Post a fair bit since then for Wellington news. What’s interesting is how different Stuff’s approach to digital news is to its major competitor – the NZ Herald.
From what I’ve seen the most common approaches to so-called ‘premium content’ is to either have all the free stuff and premium stuff mixed in together in one site , and then require a subscription for the premium stuff (the NZ Herald approach), or treat the whole site as a premium offering and only allow access to a small number of articles per month without paying (the NY Times approach).
In contrast to these normal approaches, Stuff has chosen to put its premium content in three different websites, each serving a specific geographic location.
At first I was sceptical of this approach. Although I immediately subscribed to the Post (and cancelled my PressPatron subscription to Stuff), the transition to reading on Stuff to reading on both Stuff and The Post was not particularly smooth. For one thing there’s no app for the Post website and therefore no push notifications on my phone reminding me to read the news on that site. There were also some early teething issues staying logged into the Post website.
But over time I’ve come to appreciate the Post’s website.
For one thing it looks and feels modern and uncluttered, which is not how I would describe the front page of Stuff.co.nz or the associated app! There are almost no ads except for a banner at the top and real estate listings at the bottom. There are also links to related stories at the bottom of each article, and for once they actually bring up articles I actually want to read so I frequently click on them.
Another factor in the Post’s favour is that the average quality/tenor of the content feels much higher than on Stuff.co.nz. There isn’t any celebrity news (or at least not that I notice), and the articles focus on the particular geographic area I care about (Wellington) with articles covering wider events where appropriate. It’s not rocket science, but creating a separate site has enabled them to create an experience which feels much more like reading a physical copy of the Post which is curated by an editor for a Wellington reader rather than a national site which mixes clickbait with more serious news.
I will be interested to see how the three regional sites evolve over time compared to Stuff.co.nz, and whether Stuff will be able to drum up enough interest in the regional sites given Stuff.co.nz has been the main brand for so long. I have noticed the Stuff.co.nz app increasingly includes stories/opinion pieces which when you click on them take you to the Post website, so that may be one way they’re looking to drive audiences from one to the other.
Zooming out a bit, it’s interesting to note the sea change in the NZ media landscape in terms of paying for media. In 2017 I wrote a blog post titled “Why can’t I subscribe to quality local NZ media?” where I said that “I would pay for local, digital news, but there are no easy ways to do that. Why is it so hard?“. It’s nice that six years on I can finally pay for good quality local media, and I do. I encourage you to support your local media outlet too.
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