Fairfax Media launches Subscriber First product to ‘enrich’ subscriber experience
Fairfax Media has launched an exclusive subscriber-only platform for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald as part of its push to add more value for its paid subscribers.
The publisher of Sydney Morning Herald and The Age appointed David Rood in May, who most recently was editing The Sun-Herald as national subscriber editor, tasking him with the launch of Subscriber First.
David Rood appointed Fairfax Media’s first national subscriber editor
The Subscriber First websites for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age provide readers with a twice-daily curated version of the masthead’s content, with the plans to potentially offer readers exclusive content in the future.
Subscribers can also access the ‘Today’s Paper’, an interactive digital version of current and archive issues of the SMH and The Age newspapers.
In an introductory piece published on The SMH, Rood said: “Along with the first of our exclusive subscriber newsletters, Weekend Insight, this site strives to give you – our most engaged and loyal readers – premium access to news, features and analysis from our stable of award winning journalists and correspondents.
“The tagline of Subscriber First is ‘the biggest stories curated just for you’. And that’s what we’ll do – provide you with news exclusives and commentary from our journalists in Sydney, and across the world, to help make sense of the news agenda and take you behind the story.”
Subscriber First is curated twice daily – midnight and noon – and will place a “premium and priority” on analysis and commentary.
Fairfax Media is also providing subscribers with Weekend Insight, a weekly e-newsletter from Good Weekend editor, Amelia Lester, which will arrive in inboxes at noon on Fridays and provide a sneak peek at weekend content.
In a statement, Rood said: “Subscriber First and Weekend Insight are the latest in a series of initiatives delivered specifically for our highly-engaged subscriber community. We recently launched the SMH’s Subscriber and The Age’s Subscriber Hub, giving our subscribers a home for exclusive content, events, premium benefits and offers.”
Subscriber First will be adding more initiatives with the return of the editor-in-chief weekly e-newsletters from SMH editor-in-chief, Darren Goodsir, and The Age editor-in-chief, Mark Forbes. Fairfax tested these newsletters in October last year.
The launch of Subscriber First follows on from Fairfax Media withdrawing its mastheads from the digital audit.
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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Free is always going to be first.
I use Google then, I choose Nine or Seven who have scaled premium video services in-field and read their sites if I need to.
When was the last time you saw Fairfax or News Corp. breaking a news story? And with video / at a commercial production standard?
Most of News & Fairfax is made up of news wire services anyway (like Reuters & AAP) which I can also get for free.
The rest of News Corp. & Fairfax content is just opinion…. which I don’t care for any of their opinion makers anyway, which I am sure most of their readers would feel the same.
Ask the general public to name 10 opinion makers at News & Fairfax and I think you will see my point.
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I disagree, Steve. As a subscriber, I strongly value Fairfax’s commentary, analysis and editorials. Peter Hartcher, Mark Kenny, Jacqueline O’Maley, Sean Nichols, Ross Gittins, Peter Martin, Jake Saulwick, Tim Dick, Alan Stokes – all terrific.
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Looks like you are pretty much on your own there Steve 2
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I value Fairfax’s better columnists and analysis but not enough to make me want to read their material first in a subs-only area before it lands on the main website maybe a few hours or even a a day later.
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“When was the last time you saw Fairfax or News Corp. breaking a news story?”
Today. Both of them. Despite staff cuts both Fairfax and News break stories all the time. They remain the engines driving the news cycle (along with the ABC).
Subscriber First seems to be a tacit admission the vanilla websites are hiding that good work under a pile of clickbait junk.
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Just so much incorrect in this, Steve.
Fairfax and News (and other papers/text-based sites) break a large majority of stories. TV stations follow these and break far fewer.
Also hugely wrong to say most of their news is from the wire agencies. Wires are used as sparingly as possible, as a back up. Fairfax and News obviously prioritise their own journalists and their work.
And if you don’t think opinion pieces by people like Hartcher, Gordon, Kelly etc get big readership and demand respect, you’re not paying attention.
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And what’s more, what would AAP be without major shareholders News and Fairfax funding it?
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