News Corp reveals new paywalls

Rupert Murdoch has previously indicated to start experimenting with new payment models for News Corp’s newspapers. News International, the News Corp department that operates outside of the US, will start implementing such paywalls.

The plans concern the website for the Times and the Sunday Times. These two papers had a joint website, timesonline.co.uk. This site will now be split in two and the contents will be partly shielded from both visitors and Google spiders.

Visitors can choose to pay for access for either a week (2 pounds) or a day (1 pound). This will provide access to both sites. The papers will combine the paywall with a new online strategy. The Times will post less articles, but instead choose to post more in-depth articles. The Sunday Times will focus more on multimedia content and will emulate a magazine-like style.

The articles will not be indexed by search engines. Online the headlines on the homepage will be found through Google.

This month, the sites are still freely accessible.

26 May 2010