When digital news was available free 'somewhere', I wouldn't pay. But that's changed and I pay now. And why not, we used to pay for print editions and didn't think it was an unfair obstacle to getting the news.
One disadvantage of digital is that potential subscribers see the monthly/yearly fee they are paying. In the days of print, people could hide from themselves the amount they were paying when they could for example, decide to buy the paper on a Wednesday but decide not to get Thursday's edition.
All this said, I rarely buy the Observer because in my eyes it's not a newspaper at all. I don't really know what it is. The Week magazine on the other hand is plainly a catch-all newspaper and we pay for the print edition.
I think the Observer has an identity problem. I think of The Sunday Times as a newspaper - perhaps because it share a name with the daily.
And if the Observer took these comments to heart and decided that hundreds of years of tradition weren't enough to stop bankruptcy, how exactly would it rebrand?
If I was asked, I would say - dig out old copies of Picture Post and Life Magazine, and old Sunday Times mags, design around them and pay for adventurous articles with a lot of high quality photos on good newsprint.
When digital news was available free 'somewhere', I wouldn't pay. But that's changed and I pay now. And why not, we used to pay for print editions and didn't think it was an unfair obstacle to getting the news.
One disadvantage of digital is that potential subscribers see the monthly/yearly fee they are paying. In the days of print, people could hide from themselves the amount they were paying when they could for example, decide to buy the paper on a Wednesday but decide not to get Thursday's edition.
All this said, I rarely buy the Observer because in my eyes it's not a newspaper at all. I don't really know what it is. The Week magazine on the other hand is plainly a catch-all newspaper and we pay for the print edition.
I think the Observer has an identity problem. I think of The Sunday Times as a newspaper - perhaps because it share a name with the daily.
And if the Observer took these comments to heart and decided that hundreds of years of tradition weren't enough to stop bankruptcy, how exactly would it rebrand?
If I was asked, I would say - dig out old copies of Picture Post and Life Magazine, and old Sunday Times mags, design around them and pay for adventurous articles with a lot of high quality photos on good newsprint.