Paying for news online
There has been some developments lately about the way newspapers and media companies are approaching online content. These couple of changes is likely to have a global impact on publications around the world.
The Paper That Doesn’t Want to Be Free
New York Times to charge for online content
A couple of years ago, The Financial Times stood alone in believing that they can succeed in charging for their site FT.com. Now many publishers are realising quality journalism should be paid for.
The move by Rupert Murdoch News Corp’s to start charging for online content will affect news websites visited by millions of people around the world, including popular tabloids like the New York Post, The Sun in London, as well as other papers such as The Times of London. Its large Australian newspaper stable includes Melbourne’s The Herald Sun, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph and the nation’s only national newspaper, The Australian. The Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp’s Dow Jones unit, already charges for access to portion of its site and has some free stories.
This comes at a time where executives at The New York Times say they are considering ways to get readers to pay for online access, though they have yet to disclose specific plans. This is a big change from 2007, when The Times site abandoned a pay wall. 2 years in running, for some content. It concluded then that the pay wall was restricting the potential for online advertising, despite the site’s having attracted 227,000 paying customers.
These developments reflect the tough conditions that media companies have faced since the onset of the global financial crisis. Advertising revenues have dropped while physical subscription have decreased too. Online news through all sort channels, legit or otherwise, post serious competition to professional publications.
Going out of relevance and having to find new purpose even more so, are newsweeklies. At this age where actual news hit us on multiple platforms, twitts, facebook, iPones, before we even open our front door in the morning.
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