On September 30 2003, Alan (Fred) Pipes <pipes@...> wrote:

>The Argus has started to charge for the web version of the paper, but
>you can still get day-old news and letters in the Archive!

Hi

I noticed this last week myself actually.

What I'd really like is if the Argus (and papers in general) put all the
articles on the web in HTML and then charged for looking at them using a token
system.

A token system, as way of explanation to any that haven't used one, is where you
pay say ten pounds and for that get allocated a number of visits to the
web-site. If you consider an issue is 30p then ten pounds might give you 30 or
more visits.

This way you can read the paper as thoroughly as if you had bought the actual
"hard" version and the newspaper company will be making money from it.

At the moment I only buy the Argus on Thursday, to look and see if there are any
jobs, and sometimes on Saturday to read Anne Doyle's piece.

I don't buy any other papers, but what I do is scan the headlines in the shop
and if I see a news story of interest I just go to the 'net to find out more.

I do use the BBC news pages a lot!

Putting the Argus in PDF form on the 'net is no good for me because the PDF is a
ghastly thing to read at any length on the computer screen and of course they
aren't doing it on a token system but rather you have to pay as if you were
buying the Argus every day for a long period which is very expensive.

I do feel it is good to pay for the use of newspapers as the journalists who
write them have to be paid, but an accessible system for the 'net such as a
token system would be ideal.

Patrick