The Times and Sunday Times

The Times and Sunday Times recently made history by becoming the first national newspapers to charge their online readers to read the newspapers online.

Most British newspapers have been happy to allow online readers to read everything online without paying, relying on adverts and buyers of the printed edition to keep the finances rolling (like Computeractive). But if you want to read The Times or Sunday Times online you will have to pay.

That applies even if you have bought a copy of today’s paper, although if you have a Times subscription you may get free access to the websites (it has to be through The Times itself, though; subscriptions through local newsagents don’t count).

The websites of both papers have been redesigned and they now look much more like their print equivalents than we would expect from a newspaper website. You still see advertising, despite having to pay for access, but it’s less intrusive than on other sites. It’s easy to read the pages, and if you prefer there’s an ‘e-paper’ that shows the pages as they were printed rather than laid out for the web.

Content is good, with everything that appears in the daily and Sunday papers and more, though much of it – most of the news, sport and business sections – is available elsewhere on the web for nothing.

The Opinion, Life and Arts sections are clearly what The Times expects people are going to pay for, and there are some highlights including the Op-Ed Live pages that include video by columnists including Matthew Parris and Freakonomics auther Stephen Dubner.

There are also occasional ‘live chat’ events with columnists or just with other readers, and a Need to Know daily business video that comes with its own ‘heat map’ to show how popular business stories are.

It’s a pain having to log in each day, although once you are logged in you don’t need to again until the following day. Comments can be left on some stories, and if you do so you are listed under your real name which makes discourse more civilised (it’s harder for people to leave abusive comments when anonymity is limited, though you can change the name you use).

Disappointingly, the subscription does not give access to the newspapers’ crosswords – those require a separate payment – but it does give access to daily and weekly newsletters on several topics and a page of ‘exclusive offers’.

The most irritating thing about the whole process was cancelling it. There is no way to close your account online. Instead you have to phone the number shown on the My Account page (which took us to the main switchboard, not the digital accounts department), press the number for the operator, ask for the digital department and then ask to leave.