Rupert Murdoch has said the schedule for introducing pay walls to newspaper website including the Sun, the Times and the New York Post is ‘slipping’.
According to this MediaGuardian report, the News Corp owner said he couldn’t promise to meet the original date of before June next year (the end of News Corp’s financial year).
Murdoch has also been talking with rival publishers, including the Telegraph in the UK, it is reported.
SubHub, a system for niche magazine publishers and individual writers to charge for online access to their content, has received first-round venture funding.
According to paidContent:UK’s report, this brings the total investment in the company to $1.2 million since it was set up in 2004 ‘in between the original and current paid content trends’.
San Francisco and London-based start-up Bitcents launched it micropayment system for news organisations this week – the first fully functional system for publishers, it claims.
The system will enable users to pay for subscriptions to networks of content from bitcents’ partnering news sites.
The company has created the slideshow below explaining the system:
One particular feature of interest: bitcents says publishers’ content will remain discoverable through search engines under the system.
Journalism.co.uk will be following up with the company to find out more.
Google has announced plans for a micropayment system that would be available to both Google services and non-Google properties within the next year.
The outline of the system is given in a document submitted to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).
“Google believes that an open web benefits all users and publishers. However, ‘open’ need not mean free. We believe that content on the internet can thrive supported by multiple business models – including content available only via subscription. While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue. In addition, a successful paid content model can enhance advertising opportunities, rather than replace them,” said the search company in the document, which looks at how Google’s expertise could help the newspaper industry.
The paper discusses the problems of introducing a paid content model, but suggests a micropayment system – built as a development of its existing Google Checkout product – could work for the news industry.
Here’s how it would look as written in the document:
• Single sign-on capability for users to access content and manage subscriptions;
• Ability for publishers to combine subscriptions from different titles together for one price;
• Ability for publishers to create multiple payment options and easily include/exclude content behind a paywall;
• Multiple tiers of access to search including 1) snippets only with ‘subscription’ label; 2) access to preview pages; and 3) ‘first click free’ access;
• Advertising systems that offer highly relevant ads for users, such as interest-based advertising.
“Google already works with a number of premium content providers in a manner similar to the vision above. Combining our e-commerce system with our search capability and advertising platform will allow for even more flexibility for publishers and users alike,” explains the document.
The search firm also suggests the potential for more money for publishers from syndication using Google’s existing technology for both better distribution and advertising around syndicated content.
The Economist, which already charges for access to articles that are more than a year old on its website, is to introduce a new paid-for model.
The options being considered include a micropayment model and will be brought in following the completion of a review – expected within the next six months, the title’s UK publisher confirmed.
paidContent’s US site has a great round-up of the smaller and medium newspaper websites (e.g. away from the much heralded FT.com and WSJ.coms of the world) that are charging for online access.
Despite differing subscription models the overall suggestion is that online traffic has been badly affected, but some titles suggest a positive impact on print circulation as a result of charging for online.
See also paidContent:UK’s analysis of plunging print audiences and rising cover prices.
Following recent reports of possible Guardian plans to launch a paid-for members’ club, an interesting development in the US: the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has launched PG+, an exclusive area for paying subscribers.
Access to the club will cost $36 for a year or $3.99 a month.
The members-only website will offer interactive features and exclusive content beyond the title’s newspaper and web editions.
It will run alongside the existing website and give ‘behind-the-scenes insights into the news of the day’.
The new site will be hosted by a team of bloggers and allow users to build their own profile pages. Membership will also grant access to specially organised P-G events.
The Financial Times’ website has hired profiling firm Trovus to mine the site’s traffic logs in the hope of generating new paying subscribers by targetting companies whose staff regularly visit free stories.
Trovus will track the IP addresses of these readers to find out where they work, reports paidContent:UK.
While a lot of the points on this list are things Journalism.co.uk has been reporting on for a while now, Vadim Lavrusik offers a wealth of examples and encourages a discussion around his 12 points for the survival of newspapers.
The 12 points in short:
Martin Belam neatly illustrates the scarceness of scarcity when it comes to news online.
If in the charging for online news debate an ‘iTunes for news’ model is introduced, what are the factors that will push up the price and make people pay, he asks.