The Times: online content behind a paywall

The Times will no longer offer the online version of her newspaper articles for free. Falling revenues (about 7 million euros per month) force the newspaper to take serious financial measures. Not only is the editorial budget reduced, the newspaper articles will soon only be accessible to readers who register and pay.

Paywall
The Times website will be closed off through a tiered structure. Currently, visitors to the Times site are first required to register for a login account to gain access to the newspaper articles. In time, all registered visitors will have to pay 1 pound per day or 2 pounds per week to read the newspaper articles.

Earlier, German newspapers decided to ask online readers for a contribution for online content. The German newspapers indicated that, as a result of these measures, at least 90 percent of visitors would drop out. ??News International, publisher of The Times, also foresees a similarly large decline in visitors after introduction of the paywall, but rather caters to a small group of visitors who appreciated the work with a fee, rather then serve the masses for free. An equally sharp decline in advertising revenue (which is related to the number of visitors), remains to be seen. According to Witherow, editor of The Times, paying readers are more devoted and are therefore a more interesting group for advertisers.

Murdoch, head of the News International concern, also has a problem with players like Google, who index the news articles of the Times website and offer them in their own news service, like Google News. Murdoch particularly has problems with the fact that Google News generates revenues with articles that The Times invested money in to create, without The Times receiving any share of the profits. At the same time Google News keeps readers away from the Times website, thereby missing out on advertising revenue as well.

Redundancies
A paywall is not the only way to fight the financial problems. The editorial budget was also reduced by 10 percent, forcing 60 journalists to leave. Though some journalists decided to leave voluntarily. For instance, lawyer and publicist Tim Kevan, who blogged under the name of BabyBarista on The Times website. He’d rather serve the widest possible audience. Kevan shall continue his work on his own blog website, BabyBarista.com. Kevan also has more fundamental reasons to leave:

"I think the decision will prove to be a disaster. There are so many innovative ways of making cash online and the decision to plump for an across-the-board blanket subscription over the whole of their content makes them look like a big lumbering giant, unable to cope with the diversification of the media brought about by online content, blogging, Facebook, Twitter – the list is endless."

Source: Mediafacts