From Farmer Mike Dart to ed@breakfastpolitics.com, 10.06am 2 November, 2011:
From ed@breakfastpolitics.com to Farmer Mike Dart, 10.25am 2 November, 2011:
Dear Mike Dart,
The Australian has put up a paywall. Only subscribers can read beyond the first two pars of nearly all their stories. (You can subscribe for free at first but after a few months you'll have to pay for access.)
News Corp has built a very high paywall in front of The Australian, unlike the Wall Street Journal, which it also owns. The WSJ paywall is only about thigh height, according to our reckonings. You'll see WSJ stories in our International section quite often.
Breakfast Politics doesn't like to waste readers' time referring them to webpages with a paltry couple of pars in them. That's why we're now treating The Australian the same way we treat the Fairfax-owned Australian Financial Review which also has a very high paywall. We don't refer to their stories unless they've got a cracking exclusive which you just have to know about, so that you can go hunt up the hard copy. But generally speaking, we ignore stories (and papers) behind very high pay walls. Life's too short.
Best,
Chris Wallace
PS There were two links in today's Breakfast Politics to stories in The Australian today and none from the AFR.
