''The Hoopla'' was an Australian

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...

and opinion website founded by

Wendy Harmer Wendy is a given name now generally given to girls in English-speaking countries. In Britain, Wendy appeared as a masculine name in a parish record in 1615. It was also used as a surname in Britain from at least the 17th century. Its popularity ...

and Jane Waterhouse, active from 2011 to 2015. In almost four years, ''The Hoopla'' published 5000 articles from 300 writers.

History

''The Hoopla'' was launched in mid-2011 to present "news through the eyes of women" to women over 35 whose children were grown, or who had never had children. At the time, many websites targeted towards women were parenting websites. A sister website, Birdee, was aimed at younger women. Citing a lack of advertising revenue as advertisers were reluctant to spend money targeting over-50s, the website introduced a hard

paywall A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of ...

in April 2014 making articles accessible to subscribers only. This saw subscriptions plateau and visits slump. The paywall was later softened in October 2014 and subscriptions began growing by 20% month to month to 5000 overall. On 23 March 2015, Wendy Harmer announced in a post at website that ''The Hoopla'' would cease publication, citing increased competition from big players and her desire to pay contributors fairly. The website's previously published articles are available through the

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

References

External links

Official Website
Australian news websites Women's magazines published in Australia News magazines published in Australia Magazines established in 2011 Magazines disestablished in 2015 Defunct magazines published in Australia Defunct Australian websites {{news-website-stub