Fantastic news – AFR.com.au has redone it’s moronic pricing scheme, which charged readers (whoever they are) anywhere from $25 to a staggering $150 a MONTH.
Rest assurred – they have now come back to reality and are charging just $109 for non subscribers, and $45 for subscribers.
That compares favorably with the WSJ.com site, which charges me $99 as a non subscriber.
But wait….
The new AFR.com.au figure is still PER MONTH, while that WSJ.com figure is per YEAR.
So for the dubious privilege of using AFR’s unusable flash-based service, I’d have to pay, well, basically 12 times what I pay for the Wall Street Journal.
And as the article in fellow Fairfax publication smh states:
Keeping subscriptions contrasts with a move by The New York Times, which in September decided to scrap its TimesSelect subscription service, which was two years old, in favour of increasing advertising sales. The chairman of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, has indicated he will make access to The Wall Street Journal’s website free
Meanwhile the obvious is happening:
A former AFR editor, Alan Kohler, launched a free finance site, BusinessSpectator, last week.
Actually that Business Spectator site is pretty good. It was the first place that I saw the news about $113 billion giant BHPB (who I am consulting to a tiny part of) bidding for $70 billion rival Rio Tinto. They also already have advertisements.
Lance Wiggs 