Ordinary Gweilo

I see that the New York Times is the latest newspaper to abandon the ‘pay wall’ and make all their content freely available (links).  How long can the SCMP hold out against this worldwide trend?

Actually, whilst we’re on this subject (and I know I’m sounding like a broken record here), how can the SCMP website still be quite so appalling?

Surely it must be the only newspaper website anywhere in the world that doesn’t have a page showing all today’s stories (or all recent stories) in each section (e.g. Hong Kong news, China news, International, Business, etc.). 

Instead, if you select ‘Hong Kong’ there is a lead item with a picture, and 5 stories with short summaries, plus about 20 more with headlines only.  You have to click on ‘next’ to get a few more stories in the sub-categories of  ‘City’ or ‘Politics & Policy’.  Oh, and the text is tiny.

Then there’s lots of white space at the bottom of the page.    

I don’t know about you, but my PC has a mouse, complete with a little wheel thingy (and my keyboard has arrow keys).  I’ve found that these can be quite useful, because (unlike newspapers, where pages have a fixed size), web pages can be as long as you like.  If you scroll down you can see more.  It works really well (see The Guardian, The Times, etc., etc.).