No more free for all

Oh Lord Rothermere, what have you done? We thought we had a deal. We flocked to MailOnline because it ignored all the rules of internet design and crammed an endlessly expanding site with salacious gossip, titillating pictures and breaking news. It has always taken being first with the story to the point of irresponsibility. We know that journalists are meant to find a couple of reliable sources, but we loved that when a bomb went off and circumspect publishers were still in the realm of “possible injuries”, MailOnline would take an early punt on the number of deaths.

In return, we turned a blind eye to the ways in which it ripped off news from other sites and rushed to rewrite other people’s stories. We forgave it for all those ungrammatical headlines, the non sequiturs, the confusions between American and British English, the habit of naming provincial towns without giving us a clue it was talking about Australia. Heavens, we found it almost endearing that it worked so hard to give us a “sidebar of shame” offering glimpses of celebrity breasts revealed by “wardrobe malfunctions” while operating under the brand of a newspaper that purported to deplore smuttiness.

But now the Mail is asking us to pay: “We will be rolling out a new subscription service in the UK that will give you the chance to enjoy extra articles from our world-beating team of journalists. Simply called Mail+, it will offer you access to a new range of brilliant, in-depth content… even more showbiz and royal exclusives, more advice from the best health experts and more essential money-saving tips.

“You’ll also get extra sport content, special investigations and so much more. Subscribers will also be able to read more hard-hitting opinions from our unrivalled line-up of columnists. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of the up to 1,500 articles we publish every day will remain free.”

The issue is that payment brings new expectations. We shall look at the site with a more professional gaze, seeking the rigour that has always gone into the newspaper parent. It will no longer be enough to fling buckets of “content” across the site, hoping some of it sticks. This isn’t the end for MailOnline, but it is a significant moment.

At the start of the digital revolution, before anyone had died, the stupid papers ignored the internet, believing it would go away. The credulous titles, dazzled by Silicon Valley’s promise of universal good, rushed online to give away all their stories. The canny papers built paywalls.

The Daily Mail started out stupid but changed its mind. In the years that followed, UK titles moved to embrace three different models. The Financial Times went straight for subscriptions, joined by The Daily Telegraph and The Times. The Guardian, under the impression the Scott Trust could subsidise it forever, promoted free journalism and sought world domination. It became an international force but had to go to readers for donations to bail it out.

The boldest approach came from the Daily Mail, which threw millions of pounds and hundreds of new staff at a free site to build an audience big enough to encourage advertisers to pay for it (The Sun, having failed in its own attempt to make people pay, also went free, albeit without the Mail’s global ambitions and additional expense. The Daily Mirror and Daily Express followed The Sun, only without its audience).

When other titles were shedding journalists, the Mail took on 500 more, employing them in the UK, US and Australia. It is true that many of those seduced by the glamour of an international title found they were now the equivalent of battery hens, chained to computer screens, recycling stories. But they built their audience.

It is hard to be sure how many people now look at MailOnline. The Mail itself talks about 191million visits a month and 24.7million monthly unique visitors, spending 65 minutes on the site each month. It’s not like the Mail to undersell itself, yet the latest figures from the web analytics company SimilarWeb reports 376million visits in December, a third of them from the US. The same research puts MailOnline, which boasts of being the “most-widely read newspaper site in the world”, behind The New York Times.

We must admire the magnificent ambition to create and build a product based simply on advertising demand. It is remarkable to have penetrated the US so successfully. Lord Rothermere, who skilfully avoids being embarrassed by the toxic reputation among the liberal classes of the Daily Mail, has been delighted to find that MailOnline carries so little of that baggage. The downside has been the discovery that the kind of human interest that drives readers does not always encourage advertisers. Blue chip businesses do not wish to appear among the “trailer park” material that fills many of the pages.

Is seeking payment at this late stage the answer? Will millions of readers used to having it for nothing, readers who are generally interested – according to the research – in two or three pages and for four minutes at a time, stump up for the stories behind the wall? At £4.99 a month – “That’s just 16p a day!” says MailOnline – the cost seems small enough until we see what else we can get for the money. If we don’t mind having ads, we can get Netflix or the Disney channel for that. Indeed, it’s a sizeable chunk towards that BBC licence fee the Mail is always complaining about.

Kim Fletcher