The Times paywall has been the subject of plenty of speculation and comment. I won’t weigh in on what, how, why and how well they’re doing but here’s a roundup of some of the commentary I’ve read recently: The Guardian said the Times website had lost almost 90% of its readers since the paywall kicked [...]
The Times and Sunday Times announced they will start charging for online content from June at a price of one pound a day or two pounds a week. Good news for those of us sitting comfortably on the sidelines waiting to see how Murdoch’s paywalls are going to work. Great news I imagine for competitors [...]
Steve Outing wrote a useful post about the recent Aspen Institute conference, “Of the Press: Models for Preserving American Journalism.” He said discussions about business models were more realistic than he’d expected. “My fears were largely abated. I can’t predict with any certainty that the newspaper industry will deploy some of the best ideas to [...]
Phew, what a week. Rupert Murdoch gives plenty of notice that he plans to introduce paywalls on all his news websites (prompting speculation that he’s signalling to fellow newspaper owners to hurry up with their own paywall plans): NEWS Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch has announced the company will charge readers to access [...]
A wrap of some of the news companies talking about charging for online content now or in the future.
Steve Yelvington poses eight points for newspaper owners to consider when thinking about erecting a paywall (thanks to @shanerichmond for the link).
Adrian Monck's voice is one I like because he's so, well, pragmatic. Anyway, he's rejecting quite a lot of Clay Shirky's post about the future of news which I referred to in a post earlier this week.
The Wall Street Journal is one of the few newspapers to keep some of its content behind a paywall online (meaning you have to subscribe to read some of the stories). This policy bucks the trend of recent years to offer everything free online for fear that your readers will just go elsewhere if you don't. A fair policy given that daily news outlets have relatively few points of difference from one another and there's no scarcity of news online.
Jimmy Guterman, editorial director of O'Reilly's Radar group, has bid farewell to his New York Times subscription. I think he articulates well what so many are thinking: "It was hard to say no to the Times. The quality was high, the thump of the paper on the sidewalk was a pleasant sound to hear first thing in the morning, I liked the serendipity of walking through a print section, and I felt obligated to pay for the paper at a time when print subscribers were becoming an endangered species.
Rupert Murdoch says the part-paywall will remain at the WSJ. "The really specialized (material) giving the greatest insights, that will still be a subscription service," he said at Davos.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
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