Before deciding that I wouldn't be signing up for a Fairfax Digital Subscription I did some research to try to figure out what one of these subscriptions was actually worth.
Since I'll take any opportunity to make a good chart, here's a comparison of news outlet subscription rates (annualized so they're easier to compare):
Source: News outlet websites
And how to Australian news media outlets rank in terms of popularity (which might help explain how much they charge for subscriptions)?
Here's another chart showing how much web traffic (unique audience) these sites received in May 2013:
Source: Nielsen (via mUmBRELLA)
Combined, the Age and SMH get over four million uniques a month. That's almost 20% of the Australian popular. Not bad.