Stuff takes paywall plunge

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 also put up paywalls soon. 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. …Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details