Fresh wave of plans to charge for news online

A wrap of some of the news companies talking about charging for online content at some point.

Via cyberjournalist comes a report that The MediaNews Group in the US will charge for some of its online content from its 54 newspapers, including The Denver Post, The Detroit News, the Salt Lake Tribune, and the San Jose Mercury News.

The precise details of the MediaNews plan have not been disclosed, but management revealed its broad outlines in a memo to staffers released two weeks after an executive conference on interactive media.

First, MediaNews said it will stop reproducing all its print content online, meaning that some stories will only appear in the newspapers. Second, online content will be crafted to reach a younger audience; and third, online users who are not subscribed to the print edition will be required to register and pay a fee to read stories online.

Describing the new strategy for monetizing content, the memo noted: “We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead, tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don’t buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay… To be clear, the brand value proposition to the consumer is that the newspaper is a product, whether in print or online, which must be paid for.”

Via the Guardian came the report that Rupert Murdoch aims to charge for access to the online content of his multiple newspapers.

Rupert ­Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation’s newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ­”malfunctioning” business model.

Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an “epochal” debate over whether to charge. “That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience,” he said.

Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that.” Taking questions on a conference call with reporters and analysts, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”

Plunging earnings from newspapers led the way downwards as News Corporation’s quarterly operating profits slumped by 47% to $755m, although exceptional gains on sale of assets boosted bottom-line pretax profits to $1.7bn, in line with last year’s figure.

Dwindling advertising revenue across print and television divisions depressed the News Corp numbers despite box office receipts from Twentieth Century Fox movies such as Slumdog Millionaire and Marley and Me. But Murdoch said he believed signs of hope were appearing.

“I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good,” he quipped. “But it is increasingly clear the worst is over.”

He continued: “There are encouraging signs in some of our businesses that the days of precipitous declines are done, and things are beginning to look healthier.”

And via NewMediaAge comes word that Thomson Reuters are considering charging for content on their consumer-facing site.

Tim Faircliff, general manager of consumer media at Thomson Reuters, said the challenges of the recession are forcing publishers to examine pay models as ad revenues decline. “We’ll probably experiment with charging for content,” he said.