So, you’re a typical Singaporean who doesn’t believe in paying a single cent to consume online contents, because things that you pay for must be tangible.
Things like, you know, bubble tea.
And so, you go online only to read free contents. You go to the Goody Feed Facebook Page, see an article, click on it and realize that it’s app-exclusive. Ah, it’s okay because you love Goody Feed, and the app is free, so you download it and happily consume the free contents on their app.
Thank you for your support. We love you too.
And then you go to The Straits Times Facebook Page, click on an article and after reading an article, you realize it’s a Premium Article.
You’d need to pay $14.90 a month to unlock the article.
You murmured a soft curse, then went out of the article. You downloaded The Straits Times app, thinking that you can read Premium Articles from there for free, but hey: you still need to pay $14.90.
You realized that $14.90 means about three cups of bubble tea, so you’d rather not read them because bubble tea is more important.
Now, if you’ve been wanting to read The Straits Times Premium Articles but have been turned off by their pricing, today would be a good day for a “trial day”.
And I kid you not: due to a “production issue”, you can read Premium Articles for free today even if you’re not a member.
To hell with paywall.
“Production Issue” Led to Late Arrival of The Sunday Times
Today (11 November 2018), it seems like The Sunday Times arrived late for print subscribers due to a “production issue”. It’s not revealed what the issue is: whether a cat jumped over a cable that stopped the printing machine or a dog chewed on their printers.
In any case, due to this delay, all Sunday Times stories are supposedly free to read in their website and app.
And that includes Premium Articles.
Now, I’ve tried it in both their website and app, and they’ve made good their promise.
In fact, it’s even better: whatever Premium articles you can find on their website, you can access them. It doesn’t matter whether it’s published today or a few days ago: all Premium Articles are unlocked.
And on their website, they specifically tell you that it’s only for today…
…and you can read as many as you want.
What are Premium Articles?
We’re in the business of content creation as well, so we totally understand Straits Times’ move to implement a paywall.
So, what exactly are Premium Articles—which they’ve coined them as Premium Stories?
According to Straits Times, it is some of their “best content” which includes “exclusive stories, interviews and features”.
But it’s more than that—though from what I see, most Premium Stories are soft news (I might be wrong). To put it in a layman’s term, it’s news that aren’t that important but are interesting: like a cat giving birth to a dog, or a dog finding out that cats are cute.
You’ll usually see soft news being reported at the end of a news programme, too.
Important news that have impact on society, and breaking news, are still available for free in The Straits Times. These are known as hard news: news that you see reported first in news programmes.
So, yeah. Treat today as a trial day and if you like it, you can say goodbye to three bubble teas per month and subscribe to them instead.
Come to think of it, it’s not too bad of a marketing opportunity, don’t you think? #justsaying
Over in TikTok, there’s a drama involving property agents that’s caused by us. Here’s what happened:
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