
The H is closing down - jakub_g
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/The-H-is-closing-down-1920027.html
======
lambda
That's sad. I was never a regular reader of the H, but when I did come across
their articles, I found them very well written and informative.

I'm surprised they haven't tried a subscription model like LWN. LWN has
encountered similar problems, and been on the brink of shutdown before, but
every time they have announced this they have subsequently managed to increase
subscriptions enough to stay afloat. The nice thing about subscriptions as
opposed to a one-time donation drive is that it becomes a sustainable revenue
stream that they can depend on, rather than a one-time injection of cash that
dries up quickly.

LWN's subscription model seems to work really well. A subscription just means
you get access to subscriber's only articles a week before everyone else; so
if you don't need to stay absolutely on top of every development, you can read
for free. There are different levels of subscriptions, ranging from
$3.50/month to $50/month, so it's close to a "pay what you want" model (there
are some slight differences in features you get at the different levels, but
they are mostly equivalent). And subscribers are allowed to generate links
that they can share with other people to content that is still subscriber-
only, so you can still discuss an article if you feel like, submit it to HN,
or the like; they just ask that people don't abuse it by providing a feed of
all subscriber-only articles or something of the sort.

------
arnehormann
If you loved The H (heise UK), try
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=ht...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2F)
(heise Germany). It's the same company, has same excellent quality, a vastly
larger offering - but it's in German. They don't have the same monetization
issues, though. Heise is a magazine publisher and printing house based in
Hannover, Lower Saxony. I was really surprised and amused when I saw they also
printed the phone book...

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Nux
Oh, no! I love The H! :(

It is THE one serious IT news web site, no bullshit or sensationalistic crap;
well written articles by competent people. I'm so sorry it did not work out
for them, both for them and for myself.

~~~
Ecio78
_no bullshit or sensationalistic crap_

Unfortunately, and probably, this is the reason they didn't monetise it enough
:/

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raphinou
That's a pitty. I went there daily because they had good quality coverage,
sometimes of topics I didn't read anywhere else. You will be missed, The H....

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aneth4
I have no idea what The H is, however they seem to have a strong community?

Have they tried the "we need money and to rails $50,000 before x or we will
shut down" method? That seems to work for many popular sites, where people are
happy to contribute $10-$100 for the value in their lives.

~~~
vog
Indeed, I'm German and of course I know "Heise", but I never heard of their
international part "The H!". I would happily pay some bucks regularily to
support their journalism, but it seems they don't want my money. (or any other
voluntary/donation money for that matter)

~~~
lazyjones
They have plenty of paid content you can buy, also gadgets, Arduino stuff,
tool sets along with books and magazines in their shop (shop.heise.de). They
don't seem to be very good at promoting these things though, probably because
they put such an emphasis on their content (it's generally not littered with
"buy this" ads).

~~~
vog
I don't see how I could explicitly support "The H!" that way. How does Heise
know that the customer wants to support "The H!" with that (and not, C't, iX
or Heise Online)?

Even if they don't have the right people in their team to run a
donation/whatever campaign, they shouldn't have trouble finding those directly
among their readers.

------
rachelp
This is a loss, The H covered a lot of interesting material that other titles
frankly just didn't understand!

------
maaaats
It's sad that a serious site like this gets shut down. I kinda see why online
news papers often are shit; it's the only way to make money.

Why don't we as users make sites like these able to monetize? In a weird way,
most sites are the way we don't like them, because in some weird way that's
what we "like" and that's what pays off.

~~~
sbarre
I would suspect that the target demographic for sites like this is much more
likely to be using ad blocking plugins, adding a further hurdle to
monetization.

~~~
bkor
I block ads, but I have a subscription on LWN. Probably would have done the
same on h-online if their comment section would be a bit more integrated. I've
been reading this site for various years, the reporting is pretty good.

~~~
sbarre
I'm with you on that. I gladly subscribe to sites I enjoy, for exactly the
same reason (Ars Technica, Giant Bomb, etc)

I was pretty new to h-online, but I suspect it would have joined the list of
paid subscriptions sooner or later (assuming they offered it).

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jakub_g
Can anyone point some sensible alternative? On a daily basis, I've been
reading only The H and HN for many months.

~~~
Spittie
For Linux news, [http://lwn.net/](http://lwn.net/) is great, specially if you
get a paid subscription (or wait one week to read their featured articles),
but their target is probably different.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'll second LWN, and have been a subscriber for years.

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annnnd
Why did I learn about this site only now, when it is closing? :( Looks very
interesting, it's a shame.

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sciurus
This is a shame. The H was a great way to keep up with open source software
news, and they had great feature articles. LWN also has great articles, but I
don't know of anywhere else with similar quality news.

[http://www.h-online.com/open/](http://www.h-online.com/open/)

~~~
yapcguy
Should readers be firing up wget to archive the site, or does the Wayback
Machine provide good enough coverage?

[http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://h-online.com](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://h-online.com)

~~~
auxbuss
DJ says the content will stay online[0].

[0]
[https://twitter.com/Codepope/status/358144985520025600](https://twitter.com/Codepope/status/358144985520025600)

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wyclif
So after reading this, my only question is why they couldn't make it
profitable.

~~~
fuzzix
They generally eschewed false-dichotomy driven, dramatic reporting with
hyperbolic, click-hungry headlines.

~~~
petercooper
And the Web is a horrible place to do that unless you work out how to get
paying subscribers or sell your own products/services because regular ad rates
are through the floor. Now on e-mail, a tablet app, etc.. it'd have added up.

------
nathanb
One of my favorite things about The H is (was) that it always seemed to have a
handle on how many news stories to run. Many of my RSS feeds (I'm looking at
you, Ars) get skimmed simply because of volume. With the H, I generally at
least peek at the article for each story. Other news sites come and go from my
feeds (since for high-volume feeds it seems like the most important stories
will bubble up through other, less chatty aggregators), but I always kept the
H around due to the fact that it seemed to consistently run stories I couldn't
find anywhere else.

This is sad news.

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LinaLauneBaer
The H is/was the english speaking child of heise.de - the biggest German tech
news website and a big publisher of tech magazines and books. They belong to
Springer.

~~~
lazyjones
heise.de belongs to the "Heise Medien Gruppe" and certainly not to Springer.

Heise has a long history as an independent, privately owned publisher, it's
still a family-run business: [http://www.heise-
medien.de/artikel/Geschichte-1357257.html](http://www.heise-
medien.de/artikel/Geschichte-1357257.html)

~~~
LinaLauneBaer
Sorry. I remembered the facts incorrectly. I know that heise is working
together (owning?) with another publisher (d.punkt) and they said about
themselves that Springer is invested in them. So I got it mixed up in my
brain. Sorry again...

~~~
claudius
And then there’s Springer[0], one of the largest scientific publishers
worldwide, and Springer[1], one of the largest tabloid owners worldwide.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springer_Science%2BBusiness_Me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springer_Science%2BBusiness_Media)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_AG](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axel_Springer_AG)

------
readme
Why give up so easily? Put up some donation links and monetize it that way if
so many people here love it.

