News Limited says 30,000 people are now paying for premium access to ‘The Ausralian’. Sadly, it looks like I’m still not going to be among them (writes Peter Coleman).

Time’s up on the three-month ‘digital pass’ trial, and because I collect the print edition I subscribe to via News Queensland, from the newsagent, I can’t have a ‘print and digital’ bundle.

It’s a shame, but I can live without it: Ironically the only ‘premium content’ I have so far been unable to read is a puff by media writer Simon Canning (‘Positive start for paid online content strategy’) for the digital product’s readership.

His coverage of the AdTech digital media conference reports starts with the news that digital pass subscribers “are spending significantly longer with the newspaper's digital editions than anonymous browsers”. As for what’s beyond the first couple of paragraphs of this promo-masquerading-as-news… well, I think I can guess the rest.

Having bought the iPad a couple of months back to savour the tablet experience, I had been keen to see and compare offerings from News and Fairfax… and others around the world. The Malaysian ‘Berita Harian’ app is another worth a second glance.

I’ve spent time with the ‘Australian’ app on a couple of occasions, but it doesn’t bear comparison with that of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’, which I turned to regularly when overseas for the PrintCity media event last month. And that’s free.

When the automated renewal notice from News offered me a range of packages including print-and-digital a couple of weeks back, I thought that perhaps they’d resolved a stupid anomaly which has to do with the fact that my newsagent doesn’t offer a delivery service.

But no: You can’t blame News for trying, however, and 30,000 paying punters is a decent number in comparison with the print edition’s relatively modest circulation. I can of course buy a separate digital pass for $2.95 a week – instead of having it as part of a discounted package – but why would I bother.

• When I raised the issue in December, I mentioned that News also discriminated against my village shop by excluding it from distribution of their ‘Noosa Journal’. It’s an inequality they’ve now resolved by closing the free weekly.