The Irish Times launched it’s first free news site at irishtimes.com today, thus becoming one of the last papers to give in to the new business model for news organizations oiled by links rather than subscribers. The newspaper’s been awailable to subscribers at ireland.com since 2002:
The redesigned www.irishtimes.com aims to reflect the changing demands of online readers. The simplified and improved structure of the site is intended to keep pace with internet-user demand by helping readers find what they want quickly.
Blogger and professor Jeff Jarvis also published his article on clash of the media models at The Guardian today. It goes to the point of why paid contect news organizations are facing new challenges: because it’s a link economy, stupid.
That being said, the design of irishtimes.com is visually cool, but the site and the content is not shareble other than via email. Who does that anymore?
