Lancashire Telegraph's Rovers Coverage

[Darrenbot]

Looks like part of LT Rovers coverage is going behind a paywall

https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/sport/19655943.changes-will-see-blackburn-rovers-coverage/

[roversfan99]

With nothing really in the way of new information not already in the public domain and it being very much no longer being somewhere whereby breaking news can be found, plus with numerous mistypes and errors in each article, I suspect that take up will be minimal.

[Mattyblue]

Lancs Live laughing heartily…

[rigger]

I would pay to read the article about Mowbray being given the sack.

[den]

I don’t see how that will do anything but accelerate the fall in demand for the newspaper.

[Riverside under the drip]

The worst standard of writing I have ever experienced from someone above the age of 8. Why would one single person PAY for LT journalism?! Baffling that they want to drive off their last customers (Rovers fans).

Edited October 19, 2021 by Riverside under the drip

[Mattyblue]

Only quality journalism can have a working business model that includes a paywall - The Times, The Athletic etc in the UK, the big US newspapers. People buy subscriptions for ‘long reads’, in-depth investigative reporting, features, magazines supplements etc etc.

The LT is obviously in dire straits with the collapse of sales of physical papers, especially at local level and they mustn’t  be able to wash their face with online ads. 

But the industry has structurally changed and low brow papers and small, stripped out organisations like the LT just won’t get folk taking out subscriptions. As an example, The Sun tried a paywall… lasted about 6 months. There is nothing the LT offers that you can’t get for free on Lancs Live… perhaps the LT won’t exist at all as a stand alone title in a couple of years (it largely doesn’t already with no HQ, a shared editorial operation with Bolton/Bury papers and sub editing in South Wales).

 

[davulsukur]

Not a great move by the LET.

If I'm scrolling through my twitter feed and there is any Rovers news, the LET and Lancs live are lways next to each other, so I'll just unfollow the LET and read the same story for free 🤷‍♂️

Assume most others will do the same.

[bluebruce]

48 minutes ago, den said:

I don’t see how that will do anything but accelerate the fall in demand for the newspaper.

They've clearly been to the Waggott School of Business.

Motto: Charge too much, lose customers and lose money. Because fuck em, that's why.

[K-Hod]

In private browsing is your friend 👍.

[Mattyblue]

That works if there’s a limited amount of articles you can read for free before it shuts you off (like how the LT website is set up now).

But if they are setting up a model like The Times, for example, you can’t read anything without signing up.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Mattyblue

[bluebruce]

34 minutes ago, Riverside under the drip said:

The worst standard of writing I have ever experienced from someone above the age of 8. Why would one single person PAY for LT journalism?! Baffling that they want to drive off their last customers (Rovers fans).

The other day I read an article about the Wharton brothers. It described a match for each of them, and it wasn't at all clear what matches they were talking about. For Adam it didn't even mention the opposition, and for Scott it talked about a 3-0 defeat to Manure, and it wasn't clear from it that this was our second 3-0 defeat to them recently, but in the u23 league this time. I spent quite a while on google trying to figure out wtf had actually happened (google hadn't updated the u18 results yet).

There's zero chance of me ever giving them a penny, so all they're doing here is losing advertising money, from me at least and it looks like others. Their pay articles won't get opened, and over time I will probably migrate to Lancs Live, who have neither restricted the number of articles you can read, nor put up a paywall. If they can do it, why are the LT failing to make ends meet? That's the question they should be asking themselves, not how can they get more money out of customers.

[K-Hod]

5 minutes ago, Mattyblue said:

That works if there’s a limited amount of articles you can read for free before it shuts you off (like how the LT website is set up now).

But if they are setting up a model like The Times, for example, you can’t read anything without signing up.

Ah right, fair. Oh well, looks like I’ll have to read my Rovers news elsewhere!

[bluebruce]

12 minutes ago, K-Hod said:

Ah right, fair. Oh well, looks like I’ll have to read my Rovers news elsewhere!

They have started marking articles as 'Premium'. At first I thought this meant all the Premium articles (only one so far) would be behind a paywall. But after opening it, it suggests the Premium articles are free and the others cost money, I think. Premium also reduces advertising by 80% (so presumably their end improved profit can't be much even on the people who take it up, as those will be the ones who read tons anyway and generate more ad revenue).

But I'm at work so will have to read the full article about how it works later.

[simongarnerisgod]

the telegraph are terrified of upsetting anyone at the club,which kind of defeats the object of journalism imo,why would you pay to read a eulogy of mowbray and waggot when it`s certaintly not deserved,if they wrote balanced articles then fair enough but we could lose every game until the end of the season and the l.t would still would`nt change their approach

[K-Hod]

If it was good journalism without loads of grammatical errors, you could kind of make a case for paying for it.

But as it is, they’re taking the absolute proverbial.

[Waggy76]

I won't lose any sleep over this and I won't be spending 1p....

[bluebruce]

2 hours ago, bluebruce said:

They have started marking articles as 'Premium'. At first I thought this meant all the Premium articles (only one so far) would be behind a paywall. But after opening it, it suggests the Premium articles are free and the others cost money, I think. Premium also reduces advertising by 80% (so presumably their end improved profit can't be much even on the people who take it up, as those will be the ones who read tons anyway and generate more ad revenue).

But I'm at work so will have to read the full article about how it works later.

Ok so, turns out this is the opposite of how it works...even in explaining how their new system works they're demonstrating their incompetent writing.

From the 'premium' article when you click it:

'This is a premium article that you can read for free. Get access to all our articles, with 80% less advertising, for just £2 for 2 months.'

To me this implied you can read premium articles for free, but turns out they meant this is a premium article but is free for now to give you a taste.

From the article explaining what is happening now:

'If you haven’t already noticed, you will do from now going forward, that a blue ‘premium’ tag will appear at the top of some of our articles. Those will soon become subscriber-only content, accessible to those who have signed up to the Lancashire Telegraph.'
 

Then talks about how the majority of articles are still free and they're 'not disappearing behind a paywall'. I assume this means they're getting rid of the X amount of articles a month, for those free ones. Which I guess will make my reading experience simpler - skip all premium articles and don't have to switch between private browsing and different browsers if I run out. But if the actual news starts being behind a paywall I'll probably migrate to Lancs Live entirely, eventually.

[Ianrally]

Is it written in grammatical English? No

Do they have proof readers anymore? Well if they do I’d love to know what sort of guide dogs they have because how many times do you see half an article that ends with “ Continued on page *** and when you turn to said page, nothing.

It’s not fit to wrap chips in. 

 

[bluebruce]

It's often said that the LT doesn't criticise the manager or the club for fear of losing its direct contacts and interviews at Rovers. I agree but I've come to realise there's a secondary reason though - they don't want to lose some of their readers.

This is one of the comments under the article about how they're going to start charging to read the Premium articles:

'I'll not be subscribing again whilst Rich Sharpe writes his garbage and incessant criticism of an extremely young and club team facing a mammoth task with their hands tied due to having a really poor support base to draw financially from.'

[tomphil]

Those comments are not worth the time of day they re clear plants or whums.

HSH or some other lot are active on those platforms for sure it's obvious with the spin starry eyed crap some of them come out with, Not long ago i sussed out a multiple account holder who only surfaced to give ott praise to TM after a win. He pretended to be Irish but guess where he was from... ?

Edited October 20, 2021 by tomphil

[Mattyblue]

You say that tomphil, but take away the Sharpe element of it and I hear plenty of that kind of stuff at Ewood. 

‘Young team’, ‘Crap fans’, ‘no passion’, ‘small club’, ‘fans to blame if we do a Bury’, ‘owners put in a fortune’, ‘who you gonna get better than Mowbray?’, ‘we’ve no money FFS’ (though they’ve just said the owners put in a fortune, so go figure!).
 

Edited October 21, 2021 by Mattyblue

[lraC]

Mix that in with a Burnley fan having more fun than he would in a brothel and they may struggle to attract many subscribers.

[tomphil]

1 hour ago, Mattyblue said:

You say that tomphil, but take away the Sharpe element of it and I hear plenty of that kind of stuff at Ewood. 

‘Young team’, ‘Crap fans’, ‘no passion’, ‘small club’, ‘fans to blame if we do a Bury’, ‘owners put in a fortune’, ‘who you gonna get better than Mowbray?’, ‘we’ve no money FFS’ (though they’ve just said the owners put in a fortune, so go figure!).
 

Always been the same though some were saying that under Kean.  At Wigan away with Ince me and my mate and a few randoms had to stop a gang of kids trying to set about a couple of young lads who started chanting Ince out.

Remember the 1875 protest ?  A good chunk of the crowd upped and out whilst some booed and a few sat and clapped.  The minority always shouts the loudest as they say but when the crowd turns it turns. Difference is with Mowbray and his gang they did out a good result at Ewood every time the patience is wearing thin. Then they say all the right things briefly and the credit in the bank from a couple of good seasons years ago still stands with some.

Edited October 21, 2021 by tomphil

[Mattyblue]

Oh I agree, my point was more that I don’t think that a lot of the LT comments are a million miles away from what I hear every week.