With TheTimes.co.uk and SundayTimes.co.uk still not releasing traffic figures through the Audit Bureau of Circulations, we can’t yet see the impact of the paywall in terms of browser figures. But according to research published by Enders Analysis, the value of a paywall subscriber is only a fraction of a print reader.

The research, carried out by Benedict Evans, compared annual incomes from subscribers for paywalled newspapers TheTimes.co.uk and WSJ.com with those for UK quality daily papers.

The main findings quoted online are as follows:

A newspaper paywall subscriber is worth only a quarter to a third of a print buyer: even if every single print buyer is successfully converted to the paywall, newspapers will still face a basic problem of scale.

Paywalls will not be able to compensate for lower revenue per reader by expanding the audience for paid news, due to the long term decline of circulation, free online news, 24-hour broadcast news and free-sheets.

Future change will be radical: publishers may need to consider producing a newspaper its loyal readers recognise and value with just 200 rather than 500 journalists.

Hatip: paidContentUK

• Should we ‘pay the wall’ to maintain quality journalism?
• Forbes.com: Circulation revenue is more stable than paywalls, says Scripps senior VP
• paidContent:UK: Newsagents see 14 per cent decline in newspaper revenue over a decade
• The Times and Sunday Times: What a paywall looks like
• WAN 2008: Print and online newspapers on the rise

News Corp’s Dow Jones has confirmed speculation from earlier this week and announced that the Wall Street Journal will now charge for full access to its content via Blackberry, iPhone and iPod touch devices.

According to a press release, the WSJ applications will remain free to download for each device and continue to offer a mixture of free and subscription content.

The new access model will be introduced from October 24 and hopes to expand the paying audience for Dow Jones’ content by highlighting the specialist, time-sensitive nature of its news.

“Our new mobile subscription model will enable us to continue to invest in the world’s most essential news content and deliver it to our subscribers wherever and whenever they want it,” said Gordon McLeod, president of the Wall Street Journal digital network, in the release.

“This transition also reinforces the value of our content on mobile, just as we’ve done online for more than a decade.”

Full access to the site from these applications will cost $2 per week for a mobile-only subscription. A subscription to mobile and the WSJ in print or online will cost $1 a week.

Print and online subscribers will have free access to content via the smartphone apps.

Full access to the site’s mobile site will only be granted to WSJ.com subscribers, the release added.

Today UK website the Spectator announced it would introduced a range of subscription packages for its website with immediate effect.

• iPad news: would you pay more?
• Sydney Morning Herald: The Australian to reveal paywall details this week
• Mobile plans for London Evening Standard announced at Mobile World Congress
• Rumour mill cranks up over upcoming New York Times ‘paywall’
• Times and Sunday Times will be paywalled from June – £1 a day

Guest blogging on Reflections of a Newsosaur, Bill Grueskin, the academic dean of the School of Journalism at Columbia University and former managing editor of WSJ.Com, offers his translation of comments by the Google’s vice-president of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer, to the Senate commerce subcommittee hearing.

“Her elliptical comments at a congressional hearing on the sorry state of the newspaper industry revolved around a message that seemed to add up to: ‘Lotsa luck, fellas.’”

Full post at this link…

• Fast Company: Who are the most influential women in Web 2.0?
• Washington Post using Apture for article links
• CNN: ‘Are you a newspaper person?’ asks iReport
• Forbes.com: Bloomberg reporters told their tweets are inaccurate
• Ariana Huffington: ‘Journalism will not only survive but thrive’

Former WSJ.com managing editor Bill Grueskin looks at ‘link journalism’ venture Publish2 and the recently launched Journalism Online, whose founders include an ex-WSJ publisher and the founder of American Lawyer.

Can Journalism Online’s founder translate their wealth of ‘traditional media’ experience online?

“One new firm seeks to generate much-needed revenue by building a platform for subscription services, another seeks to generate new forms of journalism with a platform to share and distribute content. It’s hard to reconcile those two visions of journalism’s future,” writes Grueskin.

Full post at this link…

• AllMediaScotland: Glasgow local paper closes after 14 years
• French newspapers in cahoots over pay system to rival Google
• BBC Trust launches ‘its largest’ TV service review – into BBC One, BBC Two and BBC Four
• ReadWriteWeb: CNET signs up for Open Calais
• Innovations in Journalism – Seesmic.com

An illustrative feature on why local television stations in the US face a fuzzy future. “Now, with their viewership in decline and ad revenue on a downward spiral, many local TV stations face the prospect of being cut out of the picture,” WSJ comments.

“Executives at some major networks are beginning to talk about an option that once would have been unthinkable: eventually taking shows straight to cable, where networks can take in a steady stream of subscriber fees even in an advertising slump.”

Full story at this link…

• Reuters: Microsoft plans new subscription TV service via Xbox
• Advertising Age: Why ad networks are surviving
• Growing effect of online advertising in US, OPA study suggests
• Jeremy Hunt: No local TV is one of biggest gaps in British broadcasting
• Associated Press launches story and picture service for mobiles

According to industry estimates of data that the Audit Bureau of Circulations is releasing today, most of the large US newspapers saw a drop in print circulation in the six months through to September.

• US newspaper circulations still falling, but decline is slowing
• paidContent: Decline in consumer magazine circulations slows
• Lone Star defies downward trend in revised ABC results
• Brand Republic: FT withdraws from ABCe audits for web traffic
• Guardian debuts six-monthly ABCe figures for regional websites

So Boris might give out Blackberries (well, ‘blackberry-type gizmos’) to Olympics spectators in 2012, but over in the States Wall Street Journal journalists are finding that their technology allowance is being cut back.

Or so this ‘internal memo’ on Gawker.com would have us believe. Is it for real? Apparently, all WSJ news staff have been told that a new money-saving measure is in place: ‘at its core is the concept of “one person/one machine.’

“If you are an office-based editor, you’ll get a new desktop. If you are a reporter or editor who travels on assignment, you’ll get a new laptop with a docking station, keyboard and monitor for office use.”

That’s what the alleged internal memo reads. Comments below the Gawker article are sceptical: surely the typos in the memo are a bigger story than the computer cuts, writes ‘drunkexpatworker’.

Hmmm. Authentic or not? It seems an odd kind of prank if not: it wasn’t that funny.

• Overheard something humorous in your newsroom?
• Video: Evidence of more media restrictions on BP oil spill beaches
• Nieman Journalism Lab: NYTimes appoints Jennifer Preston as social media editor
• A short film on photo assignments
• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – preventing back strain at work

Yesterday, Beet TV flagged up that a record number of users seeking online media information led to a seven per cent spike in traffic for Akamai, the delivery network which carries the internet flow for NBC, the BBC, Reuters and other news sites.

The current economic turmoil, hurricanes and the presidential campaign has helped boost the need for online information. At their peak, Akamai were registering 3.7 million requests per minute.

The spike follows a trend for online news sites doing well in times of financial strife: last month site traffic ‘exploded’ at the FT.com, as a result of the drop in share prices.

The need for information was felt on Wall Street, coinciding with a redesign of the Wall Street Journal Online. “Monday set an all time record of two million visitors”, a Wall Street Journal spokeswoman told Beet.TV.  Traffic on Tuesday was nearly as high.  “These are pretty big numbers, considering monthly unique visitors are 17 million,” she said.

The irony is that financial disaster, hurricanes and presidential elections seem to be a good thing for the world of online media.

• Election traffic: WashingtonPost sees biggest jump but CNN leads
• Portfolio: WSJ quietly making big traffic strides
• Talking Biz News: Dow Jones restructuring
• Beet.tv: WSJ to expand live news video online
• Wall Street Journal: New York Times to start charging for online in January

The Wall Street Journal set its revamped site live today, so here’s a breakdown of what’s changed and what’s new:

New

• Journal Community - a social networking feature for the site’s paying subscribers, which lets them comment on articles, ‘ask the expert’ and join topic-based networks and discussion groups
  
• Subscriber-only sections marked with a key icon and available for preview by non-subscribers
• Newsreel - a scrolling, horizontal panel topping article pages, which links to other top stories. (Seems to be on most US stories at the moment, as shown in the picture below)
• New video player and slideshow viewer
• A new WSJ.com mobile reader for the Blackberry
• New management section – available to subscribers only
  

Changes

• Expanded content across its What’s News, Heard on the Street, small business, technology, US and world news, politics, personal finance and lifestyle sections
• Improved navigation – including horizontal menu bar across all pages
• Redesigned article pages to support more multimedia content and provide ‘related analysis’

Paying subscribers to the site, which WSJ claims have risen to more than 1 million, will also have increased access to the site’s archive.

• WSJ confirms paid-for access to news on mobile
• Behind the scenes: Telegraph.co.uk’s redesign
• News of the World launches website redesign in beta
• NYTimes.com: New WSJ.com uses its community of subscribers
• @BtPW: Golden age for mobile news sites is ending – well, in Japan

The Wall Street Journal will activate a revamped version of its website tomorrow, but the existing wall that blocks non-subscribers from reading most of the site’s business news articles will remain.

• What’s new in the WSJ.com redesign
• WSJ confirms paid-for access to news on mobile
• TheDailyBeast: Ex-WSJ assistant publisher on paid online content – myths and facts
• FT.com: WSJ to introduce micropayments
• Talking Biz News: Dow Jones restructuring

This Saturday’s Wall Street Journal will see the first issue of a new glossy magazine, one part of their development project, which also includes the relaunch of the Journal’s WSJ.com website on September 16.

• Talking Biz News: Dow Jones restructuring
• Wall Street Journal: New York Times to start charging for online in January
• TheDailyBeast: Ex-WSJ assistant publisher on paid online content – myths and facts
• New York Magazine: Weigh-in for New York Times and Wall Street Journal
• EditorsWeblog: Emerging nations favour mobile internet access

Subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal’s pay-for website have risen 88 per cent over the last year, according to News Corporation’s end of year results.

Total profit for the company is up from £1.7 billion to £2.7 billion.

• WSJ: Thomson Reuters reports 66 per cent profit increase
• Digital ad revenue up 30 per cent at Wall Street Journal
• NYT second-quarter operating profit more than twice 2009 figure
• New figures suggest continued growth for US magazine advertising
• Online advertising spend tops £4bn after 12.8% rise

In case you hadn’t noticed, Journalism.co.uk was in Sweden last week covering the World Association of Newspapers annual conference and the World Editors Forum.

So no one misses out, here’s a round-up of what went down while we were away:

Guardian: BBC ends ‘licence fee’ plans for international news website
The Beeb has dropped proposals for subscription-based access to BBC.com

WSJ.com: Analysis of hyperlocal news site LoudounExtra.com
Following the departure of Rob Curley, chief architect behind the Washington Post spin-off site, WSJ asks if the site has found its audience a year into the project.

Editor&Publisher: 94 newspapers join Yahoo partnership
A total of 779 newspapers now have access to the search engine’s advertising technology and HotJobs ads.

Daily Mail: Sir Ian Blair advocates use of celebrity news videos as evidence in drug trials
Footage, such as the Sun’s infamous Amy Winehouse video and of Kate Moss snorting a white substance, should be presented to the jury in such cases, Blair has said.

Guardian: BBC’s new plans for personalisation of website
Plans to create a new rating, recommendation and personalisation system across bbc.co.uk will be put to the BBC Trust, according to the corporation’s latest programme policy statement.

Editor’s Weblog: Washington Post launches online publishing company
The Slate Group will feature a host of digital titles including Slate and The Root, with additional launches planned.

Telegraph.co.uk: Update on revamp of community blogging platform MyTelegraph
Communities editor Shane Richmond says a relaunch date will be announced by the end of next week.

Matthew Ingram: Globe and Mail removes pay wall
Number of subscribers was not enough to maintain the wall, says Ingram, who works for the paper. Some readers remain unconvinced, he says, pointing out one comment: “You can’t shut us out for a few years and then expect us to come back just because it’s free.”

MediaShift: Everyblock releases first special report
The hyperlocal data and news site has mapped information from a recent Chicago police bribery investigation as part of its first special report.

• paidContent:UK: Interview with Jacob Weisberg, Slate Group editor-in-chief
• E&P: Washington Post survey suggests hyperlocal moves are afoot
• Loudoun Independent: Washington Post pulling plug on hyperlocal site in Loudoun
• Nieman Journalism Lab: Why the NYT was wrong to keep quiet about Rohde’s kidnap
• Nieman Journalism Lab: Globe and Mail on setting up a news wiki

Integrating newsrooms isn’t just a matter of putting all you desks in a spoke and fulcrum formation and projecting the web traffic figures on the wall.

The small matter of how you remunerate journalists expected to work both for print and web is an issue for newspapers across the globe.

It’s an issue that the Guardian and Telegraph, to name just two in the UK, have been wrestling with as they bring their divergent print and online editions closer together.

International editors sitting on a panel looking at whether integrated newsrooms are really working at the World Editors Forum, today in Goteborg, Sweden, admitted to a similar set of problems.

Jim Roberts, editor of digital news at the New York Times, told delegates that the Times’ own integration plans were hampered by the different contracts and lower pay web journalists were receiving compared to their print colleagues.

Roberts is overseeing the introduction of a ‘horizontal’ news production system where each separate news department has web producers embedded with them to encourage multimedia content production, oversee publication.

The Times is trying to spread multimedia, video, podcasts and interactive features across all its news verticals – even to the point where the Times is reverse publishing blog content as columns into the printed edition of the newspaper.

This drive for web content has also brought a renewed thirst to keep the newspaper print edition fresh, as Roberts said ‘to redirect this energy back into print’.

But as staff are now expected to work for both web and print, the different contracts they work under has led to union wrangles. WSJ.com managing editor Almar Latour and Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief of El Pais, Spain, agreed that they faced similar contractual problems on their integration projects.

• #followjourn: Dan Roberts/business editor
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Print and online integration ‘not the key to success’
• Headline mishaps at Johnston Press and Newsquest titles
• MediaGuardian: Trinity Mirror announces redundancies for all 300 editorial staff in Midlands
• iPad news: would you pay more?

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has named Sarabjit ‘Ruby’ Walia as chief technology officer for its digital network.

Walia will manage the technology across WSJ.com and Dow Jones’ sister websites Barrons and MarketWatch.

He joins the Journal from business and financial communications consultancy Financial Dynamics.

“Ruby’s success leading digital technology businesses within large media companies in this space will ensure our ability to innovate and continue to bring users the most effective digital experiences possible to our millions of loyal users,” said Gordon McLeod, president of the WSJ digital network, in a press release.

• E&P: Haitian press ‘every bit as devastated as island itself’
• TheBusinessDesk expands with iPhone app for regional business news
• WSJ confirms paid-for access to news on mobile
• Digital Journal launches revenue sharing for its citizen journalists
• Talking Biz News: Dow Jones restructuring