Wednesday 14 July 2010

Price of the paywall? Guardian has more comments than The Times on Lord Mandleson book exclusive





Interesting to compare the number of comments on The Times online site, now behind a paywall, on its exclusive that Lord Mandelson claims Tony Blair thought Gordon Brown was "mad, bad and dangerous" to that of the Guardian which is carrying the same story.
The Times, (top) which broke the story via its exclusive serialisation of Lord Mandleson's new book, The Third Man, had just 31 comments by 12.30 today.
In contrast, Guardian.co.uk (below) had 243 comments on its story Blair thought Brown was mad, bad and dangerous.
Update: By 6pm The Times had 41 posts and the Guardian 332.
  • As well as requiring readers to register and pay to use The Times online site, the paper has also introduced a policy to stop commenters posting under pseudonyms.

2 comments:

Jamie said...

Hasn't the Guardian always had more commenters, though?

The Indy, which has also implemented an anti-pseudonym comment system, only has 26 comments at the moment. Don't know whether it's always had fewer, mind.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/blair-thought-brown-was-mad-bad-and-dangerous-says-mandelson-2026231.html

Craig McGill said...

But does the extra number of comments actually bring any financial benefit to the Guardian?