Tag: new zealand

The Herald introduces a paywall

I’ve previously blogged that I want to pay for NZ news but no-one would take my money. I’m glad to see the New Zealand Herald has finally introduced a paywall.

I think the paywall is a great development for the media in New Zealand — so much so that I bought a small number of NZME shares after the paywall plans were first announced. It has been delayed for many months, and according to the managing editor may even be 20 years too late.

It’s not at all clear that it’s going to work. As the Spinoff put it: “The NZ Herald is about to put up a paywall and the stakes are scarily high”. So hopefully the whole thing is a success and my money doesn’t go in flames like the rest of the media industry.

Details of the paywall

The premium Herald costs $5 a week or $199 per year, but is free for daily newspaper subscribers. There’s also $2.50 per week introductory offer.

For that price you get access to ‘premium’ content on the Herald website, which is marked by a yellow tag. Behind the paywall you’ll find long-form journalism, opinion pieces, most business news, and syndicated content from various international media including the New York Times, Bloomberg and the Financial Times.

Behind the paywall

I promptly subscribed to the paywall, which was easy seeing as I already had a Herald account, and enjoyed the ‘premium’ stuff on the website. On the first few days a good two-thirds or more of the website seemed to be premium content.

Being a subscriber also means you can sign up to premium newsletters which highlight good stuff to read, and thank you over and over again for being a premium subscriber. I now subscribe to the general premium newsletter, premium business, and non-premium business. These curated newsletters are a good way of picking up stuff you may have otherwise missed.

Is this a good idea?

You already know I think this is a good idea, but I think I’m not exactly representative of the general public. I already subscribe to the New York Times, as well as contribute to Newsroom, E-tangata, Public Address, Bill Bennett, etc through Press Patron. I have  access to the NBR and Newsroom Pro through work. I also follow heaps of NZ journalists on Twitter.

I have taken an active interest in seeing how people react to the idea of the paywall, and it hasn’t been pretty. I’ve seen many a punter violently react to the idea that they should pay for online news. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but people have a lot of ill-feeling towards the online news media, pointing out the trash that’s routinely on the front pages of both the Herald and Stuff to draw people in.

I do know the status quo for funding the news media in NZ doesn’t seem to be sustainable. Even though the media is still pumping out important, quality journalism, almost every outlet seems to be struggling against the fact that their advertising driven business model is going terribly.

So I’m hoping the Herald introducing a paywall is a first step towards recalibrating how people view the media in NZ. Good journalism costs heaps of money to produce, so it’s not tenable for it to be given away free online.

I do worry that the particular way the Herald has designed its paywall will further entrench divisions between the ‘why would I pay for this shit’ camp and the ‘good journalism is worth paying for’ camp, because the average person has no way of seeing what’s behind the paywall. For that reason I favour a ‘you can read 5 free articles a month’ model which allows you to see what you’re missing out on, but the Herald people must have some reason for pursuing their current strategy.

So good luck to the Herald team. There’s a lot riding on this experiment!

The need for a green stimulus package

banknotesedited8As governments struggle to combat the effects of the economic crisis around the world, there have been calls for stimulus packages to combine tackling the worsening global economy with the ever urgent need to combat climate change. Rather than seeing the recession as a hindrance or obstacle to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, it can be viewed as an opportunity. A green stimulus package would be a step towards a sustainable future. A report released by Sir Nicholas Stern and colleagues argues that a green stimulus package could:

“provide an effective boost to the economy, increasing labour demand in a timely fashion, while at the same time building the foundations for sound, sustainable and strong growth in the future” — An outline of the case for a ‘green’ stimulus

It appears advice of this nature is being taken to heart by governments around world. The stimulus packages of the United States, Australia, and England have all included spending of various degrees on green projects, including energy efficiency measures that address the opportunity that retrofitting and improvement of housing stock and government buildings presents. Barack Obama has stressed the need to create thousands of  “green collar jobs” to offset the rising number of unemployed across America. These packages recognize that insulation (or weatherization as it is called in the US) and improvement of buildings provides a unique opportunity for investment that has a huge long term benefit.

Ralph Chapman at Victoria University has shown that the benefits (in terms of lower energy consumption, reduced emissions, better health of occupants etc) of insulating houses outweighed the cost by a factor of two to one. It is clear why insulation should be an integral part of any stimulus package.

In the face of such seeming consensus that improvement of housing is a good idea, why does the stimulus package prepared by the New Zealand government only contain NZ$124.5 million of spending on housing? Also, why was one of the first items on the new government’s agenda scrapping the planned NZ$1 billion -revenue neutral- household insulation fund? A decision that is now proving to be an embarrassment in the face of international initiatives and a lost opportunity to tackle climate change.  Lets hope the NZ government recognises spending lots of money on new roads is not the most worthwhile investment and that insulating houses and energy efficiency measures will ultimately provide a greater long term benefit.

Image credit: The.Comedian on flickr.

Edited September 2014