Tag Archives: paywalls

BBC Radio 4 Today: Pay walls discussed with @ruskin147 and @emilybell

1 Reply

This morning’s Today Programme discusses pay walls with BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones; Emily Bell, director of digital content at the Guardian; and Roger Parry, former chair of Johnston Press.

Johnston Press is – from this morning – to start charging for web access to some of its regional newspapers.

Cellan-Jones says it will be a ‘real test of the appetite of readers to actually pay for what’s online’.

Emily Bell makes the distinction between ‘paid content’ and ‘pay walls’; while she is sceptical about the future success of pay walls, people might be willing to pay for an iPhone app, for example, she says.

Full post at this link…

Channel 4 News: @robertandrews and @ciaranj debate News International, Bing and Google

Leave a reply

Further to yesterday’s news from the Financial Times that Microsoft is considering paying for news content to appear on its search engine Bing (in a ‘web pact’ with News International), Channel 4 News last night debated the potential impact this could have on the market.

Krishnan Guru-Murphy discussed with paidContent:UK editor, Robert Andrews, and head of social media at global media agency Mindshare, Ciarán Norris.

Josh Halliday: David Banks on thinking beyond the pay wall

Leave a reply

Josh Halliday digests former Daily Mirror editor David Banks’ thoughts on bloggers, pay walls and ‘aggregationists’, given in a guest lecture to Sunderland University students.

Weighing in on the pay wall debate, Banks had some strong views – the choicest quote being:

“Everybody talks about paying to break through the paywall, I don’t know anyone who quite knows how Rupert plans to do this. Nobody talks about it, they just say ‘Oh yeah, well if Rupert says it then it’ll work’.”

Full post at this link…

Matt Busse: How you can still read the Wall Street Journal for free

3 Replies

Something for those media executives considering building pay walls around their content, Matt Busse details how to read the WSJ for free using Google.

“Oh, and this isn’t new. It’s been an open secret since at least March 2008,” adds Busse.

Full post at this link…

NMA: Times pay wall from next spring?

Leave a reply

NMA has more details on News International’s pay wall plans – Times Online is reportedly set to introduce the system in Q1 next year, while dates for The Sun and News of the World are undecided.

The Times website will also have a redesign next year as part of the changes.

“A source close to News International said because users will be charged to access the title, the site won’t focus on generating page impressions. It will be overhauled with a focus on a rich user experience, with content easier to find, and building greater user interaction. It’s also planning to run more live debates across the site, such as a recent discussion about the BNP,” writes NMA.

Full post at this link…

Mumbrella: Murdoch to remove sites from Google’s index?

3 Replies

Following his comments last month in which he described aggregators as ‘kleptomaniacs’ and ‘plagiarists’, Rupert Murdoch has suggested News Corp could remove its sites from Google’s index.

Speaking in an interview with Australia’s Sky News (video below): “I think we will [remove our content from Google’s index]. But that’s when we start charging.”

As Mumbrella explains: “Using the robots.txt protocol on a site indicates to automated web spiders such as Google’s not to index that particular page or to serve up links to it in users’ search results.”

In the interview, Murdoch also discusses what could be put behind potential news site pay walls.

Full post at this link…

MediaGuardian: New pay walls will be delayed, says Murdoch

1 Reply

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.

Full story at this link…

paidContent:UK: Subscription service SubHub secures new funding

Leave a reply

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’.

Full story at this link…

Editor&Publisher: Bitcents – the first micropayment system for publishers?

Leave a reply

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.

Full story at this link…

Media Week: Economist to introduce new pay models online

1 Reply

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.

Full story at this link…