![Paywall Example](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Paywall_Example.svg)
A paywall is a method of restricting access to
content
Content or contents may refer to:
Media
* Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers
** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing mas ...
, with a purchase or a
paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of decline in paid print readership and advertising revenue, partly due to the use of
ad blocker
Ad blocking or ad filtering is a software capability for blocking or altering online advertising in a web browser, an application or a network. This may be done using browser extensions or other methods.
Technologies and native countermeasures
...
s.
In academics,
research papers are often subject to a paywall and are available via
academic libraries
An academic library is a library that is attached to a higher education institution and serves two complementary purposes: to support the curriculum and the research of the university faculty and students. It is unknown how many academic librar ...
that subscribe.
Paywalls have also been used as a way of increasing the number of print subscribers; for example, some newspapers offer access to online content plus delivery of a Sunday print edition at a lower price than
online
In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed "on line" or ...
access alone.
Newspaper websites such as that of ''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' and ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' use this tactic because it increases both their online revenue and their print circulation (which in turn provides more ad
revenue
In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business.
Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...
).
History
In 1996, ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...
'' set up and has continued to maintain a "hard" paywall. It continued to be widely read, acquiring over one million users by mid-2007,
and 15 million visitors in March 2008.
In 2010, following in the footsteps of ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'' (London) implemented a "hard" paywall; a decision which was controversial because, unlike ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The Times'' is a general news site, and it was said that rather than paying, users would seek the information without charge elsewhere.
The paywall was deemed in practice to be neither a success nor a failure, having recruited 105,000 paying visitors. In contrast ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' resisted the use of a paywall, citing "a belief in an open Internet" and "care in the community" as its reasoning – an explanation found in its welcome article to online news readers who, blocked from ''The Times'' site following the implementation of their paywall, came to ''The Guardian'' for online news.
''The Guardian'' since experimented with other revenue-increasing ventures such as
open API
An open API (often referred to as a public API) is a publicly available application programming interface that provides developers with programmatic access to a proprietary software application or web service. APIs are sets of requirements that g ...
. Other papers, prominently ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'', have oscillated between the implementation and removal of various paywalls.
Because online news remains a relatively new medium, it has been suggested that experimentation is key to maintaining revenue while keeping online news consumers satisfied.
Some implementations of paywalls proved unsuccessful, and have been removed.
Experts who are skeptical of the paywall model include
Arianna Huffington
Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington (née Ariadnē-Anna Stasinopoúlou, el, Αριάδνη-Άννα Στασινοπούλου ; born July 15, 1950) is a Greek-American author, syndicated columnist and businesswoman. She is a co-founder of ''Th ...
, who declared "the paywall is history" in a 2009 article in ''The Guardian''. In 2010,
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
co-founder
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedi ...
reportedly called ''The Times's'' paywall "a foolish experiment."
One major concern was that, with content so widely available, potential subscribers would turn to free sources for their news. The adverse effects of earlier implementations included decline in traffic
and poor
search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or "Organ ...
.
Paywalls have become controversial, with partisans arguing over the effectiveness of paywalls in generating revenue and their effect on media in general. Critics of paywalls include many businesspeople, academics such as media professor Jay Rosen, and journalists such as Howard Owens and media analyst Matthew Ingram of GigaOm. Those who see potential in paywalls include investor
Warren Buffett
Warren Edward Buffett ( ; born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net w ...
, former ''Wall Street Journal'' publisher Gordon Crovitz, and media mogul
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
. Some have changed their opinions of paywalls. Felix Salmon of Reuters was initially an outspoken skeptic of paywalls, but later expressed the opinion that they could be effective. A NYU media theorist, Clay Shirky, was initially a skeptic of paywalls, but in May 2012 wrote, "
ewspapersshould turn to their most loyal readers for income, via a digital subscription service of the sort the
ew York Timeshas implemented." Paywalls are rapidly changing journalism, with an impact on its practice and business model, and on
freedom of information
Freedom of information is freedom of a person or people to publish and consume information. Access to information is the ability for an individual to seek, receive and impart information effectively. This sometimes includes "scientific, indigeno ...
on the Internet, that is yet unclear.
Types
Three high level models of paywall have emerged: ''hard paywalls'' that allow no free content and prompt the user straight away to pay in order to read, listen or watch the content, ''soft paywalls'' that allow some free content, such as an
abstract or summary, and ''metered paywalls'' that allow a set number of free articles that a reader can access over a specific period of time, allowing more flexibility in what users can view without subscribing.
"Hard" paywalls
The "hard" paywall, as used by ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', requires paid subscription before any of their online content can be accessed. A paywall of this design is considered the riskiest option for the content provider.
It is estimated that a website will lose 90% of its online audience and ad revenue only to gain it back through its ability to produce online content appealing enough to attract subscribers.
News sites with "hard" paywalls can succeed if they:
*Provide added value to their content
*Target a niche audience
*Already dominate their own market
Many experts denounce the "hard" paywall because of its inflexibility, believing it acts as a major deterrent for users. Financial blogger Felix Salmon wrote that when one encounters a "paywall and can’t get past it, you simply go away and feel disappointed in your experience."
Jimmy Wales
Jimmy Donal Wales (born August 7, 1966), also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedi ...
, founder of the
online encyclopedia
An online encyclopedia, also called an Internet encyclopedia, or a digital encyclopedia, is an encyclopedia accessible through the internet. Examples include Wikipedia and ''Encyclopædia Britannica''.
Digitization of old content
In January 199 ...
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...
, argued that the use of a "hard" paywall diminishes a site's influence. Wales stated that, by implementing a "hard" paywall, ''The Times'' "made itself irrelevant."
Though the ''Times'' had potentially increased its revenue, it decreased its traffic by 60%.
"Soft" paywalls
![Metered Paywall Example](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Metered_Paywall_Example.svg)
The "soft" paywall is best embodied by the metered model. The metered paywall allows users to view a specific number of articles before requiring paid subscription.
In contrast to sites allowing access to select content outside the paywall, the metered paywall allows access to any article as long as the user has not surpassed the set limit. The ''Financial Times'' allows users to access 10 articles before becoming paid subscribers.
''The New York Times'' controversially
implemented a metered paywall in March 2011 which let users view 20 free articles a month before paid subscription. In April 2012 ''New York Times'' reduced the number of free articles per month to 10. Their metered paywall has been defined as not only soft, but "porous,"
because it also allows access to any link posted on a social media site, and up to 25 free articles a day if accessed through a search engine.
The model is designed to allow the paper to "retain traffic from light users", which in turn allows the paper to keep their number of visitors high, while receiving circulation revenue from the site's heavy users.
Using this model ''The New York Times'' garnered 224,000 subscribers in the first three months.
While many proclaimed ''The New York Times'' paywall a success after it reported a profit in the third quarter of 2011, the profit increase is said to be "ephemeral" and "largely based on a combination of cutbacks and the sale of assets."
Google Search
Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the most-visited website in the world.
The ...
previously enforced a policy known as "First Click Free", whereby paywalled news websites were required to have a metered paywall for a minimum number of articles per-day (three, initially five) that could be accessed via results on Google Search or
Google News
Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It presents a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available as an app on Android, iOS, and the Web.
Google rel ...
. The site could still paywall other articles that were accessible via the page. This encouraged publications to allow their articles to be
indexed by
Google's web crawler, thus enhancing their prominence on Google Search and Google News. Sites that opted out of First Click Free were demoted in Google's
rankings
A ranking is a relationship between a set of items such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than" or "ranked equal to" the second.
In mathematics, this is known as a weak order or total preorder of o ...
. Google discontinued the policy in 2017, stating that it provide additional tools for helping publications integrate subscriptions into its platforms.
Combination
A "softer" paywall strategy includes allowing free access to select content, while keeping premium content behind a paywall. Such a strategy has been said to lead to "the creation of two categories: cheap fodder available for free (often created by junior staffers), and more 'noble' content."
This type of separation brings into question the egalitarianism of the online news medium. According to political and media theorist
Robert A Hackett, "the commercial press of the 1800s, the modern world’s first mass medium, was born with a profound democratic promise: to present information without fear or favour, to make it accessible to everyone, and to foster public rationality based on equal access to relevant facts.".
''
The Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' implemented a version of this strategy in September 2011 by launching a second website, BostonGlobe.com, to solely offer content from the paper behind a hard paywall, aside from most sports content, which was kept open to compete against other local sports websites. The former ''Boston Globe'' website,
Boston.com
''Boston.com'' is a regional website that offers news and information about the Boston, Massachusetts, region. It is owned and operated by Boston Globe Media Partners, the publisher of ''The Boston Globe''.
History
''Boston.com'' was one of t ...
, was relaunched with a larger focus on community news, sports, and lifestyle content, as well as selected ''Boston Globe'' content. The paper's editor Martin Baron described the two services as "two different sites for two different kinds of reader – some understand
hat
A hat is a head covering which is worn for various reasons, including protection against weather conditions, ceremonial reasons such as university graduation, religious reasons, safety, or as a fashion accessory. Hats which incorporate mecha ...
journalism needs to be funded and paid for. Other people just won't pay. We have a site for them." By March 2014 the site had over 60,000 digital subscribers; at that time, the ''Globe'' announced that it would replace the hard paywall with a metered system allowing users to read 10 articles without charge in any 30-day period. ''The Boston Globe'' editor Brian McGrory believed that an ability to sample the site's premium content would encourage more people to subscribe to the service. At the same time, McGrory also announced plans to give Boston.com a more distinct editorial focus, with a "sharper voice that better captures the sensibilities of Boston", while migrating other content by ''Globe'' writers, such as blogs from Boston.com to the paper's website, but keeping them freely available.
Reception
Industry
Professional reception to the implementation of paywalls has been mixed. Most discussion of paywalls centers on their success or failure as business ventures, and overlooks their ethical implications for maintaining an informed public. In the paywall debate there are those who see the implementation of a paywall as a "sandbag strategy" – a strategy which may help increase revenue in the short term, but not a strategy that will foster future growth for the newspaper industry.
For the "hard" paywall specifically, however, there seems to be an industry consensus that the negative effects (loss of readership) outweigh the potential revenue, unless the newspaper targets a niche audience.
There are also those who remain optimistic about the use of paywalls to help revitalize floundering newspaper revenues. Those who believe implementing paywalls will succeed, however, continually buffer their opinion with contingencies. Bill Mitchell states that for a paywall to bring new revenue and not deter current readers, newspapers must: "invest in flexible systems, exploit their journalists' expertise in niche areas, and, crucially, offer readers their money's worth in terms of new value."
The State of the News Media's 2011 annual report on American journalism makes the sweeping claim that: "
survive financially, the consensus on the business side of news operations is that news sites not only need to make their advertising smarter, but they also need to find some way to charge for content and to invent new revenue streams other than display advertising and subscriptions."
Even those who do not believe in the general success of paywalls recognize that, for a profitable future, newspapers must start generating more attractive content with added value, or investigate new sources of earning revenue.
Proponents of the paywall believe that it may be crucial for smaller publications to stay afloat. They argue that since 90 percent of advertising revenues are concentrated in the top 50 publishers, smaller operations can't necessarily depend on the traditional ad-supported free content model the way that larger sites can. Many paywall advocates also contend that people are more than willing to pay a small price for quality content. In a March 2013 guest post for
VentureBeat
''VentureBeat'' is an American technology website headquartered in San Francisco, California. It publishes news, analysis, long-form features, interviews, and videos.
History
The ''VentureBeat'' company was founded in 2006 by Matt Marshall, a ...
,
Malcolm CasSelle
Malcolm CasSelle (1970-2020) was an American businessman. He was CEO of BIGtoken, Inc. He was the CIO of OPSkins and was the President of WAX (Worldwide Asset eXchange). Prior to WAX, CasSelle served as CTO and president of New Ventures at Tri ...
of MediaPass stated his belief that monetization would become "something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: people
ill ILL may refer to:
* ''I Love Lucy'', a landmark American television sitcom
* Illorsuit Heliport (location identifier: ILL), a heliport in Illorsuit, Greenland
* Institut Laue–Langevin, an internationally financed scientific facility
* Interlibrar ...
pay for content, and that money goes back into making the overall content even better."
In April 2013 the
Newspaper Association of America
The News Media Alliance (formerly known as the Newspaper Association of America until 2016[Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) is a UK-based research centre and think tank founded in 2006, which operates Thomson Reuters Journalism Fellowship Programme, also known as the Reuters Fellowship.
History
The institute ...]
at the University of Oxford showed that despite the controversies surrounding paywalls, these were on the rise across Europe and the United States. According to the study by Felix Simon and Lucas Graves, more than two-thirds of leading newspapers (69%) across the EU and US were operating some kind of online paywall as of 2019, a trend that has increased since 2017 according to the researchers, with the US seeing an increase from 60% to 76%.
Reader
General user response to the implementation of paywalls has been measured through a number of recent studies which analyze readers' online news-reading habits. A study completed by the Canadian Media Research Consortium entitled "Canadian Consumers Unwilling to Pay for News Online", directly identifies the Canadian response to paywalls. Surveying 1,700 Canadians, the study found that 92% of participants who read the news online would rather find a free alternative than pay for their preferred site (in comparison to 82% of Americans), while 81% stated that they would absolutely not pay for their preferred online news site.
Based on the poor reception of
paid content
Paid content is content on the Internet – such as text, graphics, video and downloads – which is paid for. Paid content is usually copyrighted.
Some internet content has always historically been paid for — until recently there h ...
by the participants, the study concludes with a statement similar to those of the media experts, stating, with the exception of prominent papers such as ''The Wall Street Journal'' and ''The Times'', that given the "current public attitudes, most publishers had better start looking elsewhere for revenue solutions."
A study by Elizabeth Benítez from the
World Association of News Publishers
The World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organization made up of 76 national newspaper associations, 12 news agencies, 10 regional press organisations, and many individual newspaper ex ...
surveyed 355 participants in Mexico, Europe and the United States. The study found that "Young readers are willing to pay up to €6 for a monthly digital news subscription – 50% less than the average price (€14.09) across countries. According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (Simon and Graves 2019), €14.09 is the average monthly subscription price across six European countries and the United States."
Ethical implications
Deterioration of the online public sphere
Hackett argues that a "forum on the internet
..can function as a specialized or smaller-scale public sphere." In the past, the internet has been an ideal location for the general public to gather and discuss relevant news issues – an activity made accessible first through free access to online news content, and subsequently the ability to comment on the content, creating a forum. Erecting a paywall restricts the public's open communication with one another by restricting the ability to both read and share online news.
The obvious way in which a paywall restricts equal access to the online public sphere is through requiring payment, deterring those who do not want to pay, and barring those who cannot from joining the online discussion. The restriction of equal access was taken to a new extreme when the UK's ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' in October 2011 placed a paywall on foreign readers only. Online news media have the proven ability to create global connection beyond the typical reach of a public sphere. In ''Democratizing Global Media,'' Hackett and global communications theorist Yuezhi Zhao describe how a new "wave of media democratization arises in the era of the internet which has facilitated transnational civil society networks of and for democratic communication."
The use of paywalls has also received many complaints from online news readers regarding an online subscriptions' inability to be shared like a traditional printed paper. While a printed paper can be shared among friends and family, the ethics behind sharing an online subscription are less clear because there is no physical object involved. ''The New York Times "ethicist" columnist, Ariel Kaminer, addressing the question of sharing online subscription, states that "sharing with your spouse or young child is one thing; sharing with friends or family who live elsewhere is another."
The reader comments following Kaminer's response focus on the dichotomy between paying for a printed paper and paying for an online subscription.
A printed paper's ease of access meant that more individuals could read a single copy, and that everyone who read the paper had the ability to send a letter to the editor without the hassle of registering or paying for the subscription. As such, the use of a paywall closes off the communication in both the personal realm and online. This opinion is not just held by online news readers, but also by opinion writers. Jimmy Wales comments that he "would rather write
n opinion piecewhere it is going to be read", declaring that "putting opinion pieces behind paywalls
akesno sense."
In the U.S., it has been observed that the use of paywalls by high-quality publications has enhanced the reach of non-paywalled online outlets that promote
right-wing
Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...
perspectives, conspiracy theories, and
fake news
Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. Fake news often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money through advertising revenue.Schlesinger, Robert (April 14, 2017)"Fake news in reality ...
.
Paying to stay informed
The use of a paywall to bar individuals from accessing news content online without payment, brings up numerous ethical questions. According to Hackett, media are already "failing to furnish citizens with ready access to relevant civic information." The implementation of paywalls on previously free news content heightens this failure through intentional withholding. Hackett cites "general cultural and economic mechanisms, such as the
commodification
Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trad ...
of information and the dependence of commercial media on advertising revenue" as two of the greatest influences on media performance. According to Hackett, these cultural and economic mechanisms "generate violations of the democratic norm of equality." Implementation of a paywall addresses and intimately ties the two mechanisms cited by Hackett, as the paywall commodifies news content to bring in revenue from both readers and from increased circulation of printed paper's ads. The result of these mechanisms, as stated by Hackett, is an impediment to "equal access to relevant
ewsfacts."
The commodification of information–making news into a product that must be purchased–restricts the egalitarian founding principle of the newspaper. Editor's Weblog reporter Katherine Travers, addressing this issue in a post discussing the future of ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...
'', asks, "is digital subscription as permissible as charging a couple of dollars now and then for a paper copy?" While subscription fees have long been attached to print newspapers, all other forms of news have traditionally been free. Online news, in comparison has existed as a medium of free dissemination. Poynter digital media fellow Jeff Sonderman outlines the ethical tension created by a paywall. Sonderman explains that "
e underlying tension is that newspapers act simultaneously as businesses and as servants of the public’s interest. As for-profit enterprises, they have the right (the duty, even) to make money for shareholders or private owners. But most also claim to have a social compact, in which they safeguard the entire public interest and help their entire community shape and understand its shared values."
Counter strategies
Disabling the paywall
Some newspapers have removed their paywall from blocking content covering emergencies. When
Hurricane Irene
Hurricane Irene was a large and destructive tropical cyclone which affected much of the Caribbean and East Coast of the United States during late August 2011. The ninth named storm, first hurricane, and first major hurricane of the 2011 At ...
hit the United States' east coast in late August 2011, ''The New York Times'' declared that all storm related coverage, accessed both online and through mobile devices, would be free to readers. ''The New York Times''' assistant managing editor, Jeff Roberts, discusses the paper's decision, stating: "
are aware of our obligations to our audience and to the public at large when there is a big story that directly impacts such a large portion of people."
In his article discussing the removal of paywalls, Soderman commends ''The New York Times action, stating that, while a publisher "commits to a paywall as the best business strategy for his news company, there may be some stories or subjects which carry such importance and urgency that it is irresponsible to withhold them from nonsubscribers."
Similarly in 2020, a large number of outlets exempted stories relating to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
from their paywalls as a public service, and to combat
misinformation
Misinformation is incorrect or misleading information. It differs from disinformation, which is ''deliberately'' deceptive. Rumors are information not attributed to any particular source, and so are unreliable and often unverified, but can turn ou ...
relating to the virus. In April 2020, Canadian newspaper group
Postmedia
Postmedia Network Canada Corp. (also known as Postmedia Network, Postmedia News or Postmedia) is a Canadian media conglomerate consisting of the publishing properties of the former Canwest, with primary operations in newspaper publishing, news ...
went further and removed its paywall from all content in April 2020, with a sponsorship from a
fast food
Fast food is a type of mass-produced food designed for commercial resale, with a strong priority placed on speed of service. It is a commercial term, limited to food sold in a restaurant or store with frozen, preheated or precooked ingredien ...
chain.
New revenue initiatives
Given the overwhelming opinion that, regardless of paywall success, new revenue sources must be sought out for newspapers' financial success, it is important to highlight new business initiatives. According to
Poynter
Poynter is an English occupational surname for the maker of cord that fastened doublet with hose (clothing). The name derives from the Middle English "poynte" and originally from the Latin "puncta", meaning to pierce. Poynter may also be an Anglici ...
media expert Bill Mitchell, in order for a paywall to generate sustainable revenue, newspapers must create "new value"—higher quality, innovation, etc.—in their online content that merits payment which previously free content did not.
In addition to erecting paywalls, newspapers have been increasingly exploiting tablet and mobile news products, the profitability of which remains inconclusive. Another strategy, pioneered by ''The New York Times'', involves creating new revenue by packaging old content in e-books and special feature offerings, to create an appealing product for readers. The draw of these packages is not just the topic but the authors and the breadth of coverage. According to reporter Mathew Ingram, newspapers can benefit from these special offerings in two ways, first by taking advantage of old content when new interest arises, such as an anniversary or an important event, and second, through the creation of packages of general interest. ''The New York Times'', for example, has created packages, mainly ebooks, on baseball, golf and the digital revolution.
Also, successful implementation of paywalls in digital media follows a general rule of thumb: where there is a drop in advertising revenue, there is a solid chance for adopting a subscription model and/or paywalls.
Alternative revenue initiative: API
An open
API
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...
(application programming interface) makes the online news site "a platform for data and information that
he newspaper companycan generate value from in other ways."
Opening their API makes a newspaper's data available to outside sources, allowing developers and other services to make use of a paper's content for a fee.
''The Guardian'', in keeping with its "belief in an open internet",
has been experimenting with the use of API.
''The Guardian'' has created an "open platform" which works on a three level system:
#Base/Free – ''The Guardians content is free to anyone for personal and non-commercial uses
#Commercial – Commercial licenses are available for developers to use the API content if they agree to keep the associated advertising
#"Bespoke" Arrangement – Developers can partner with the newspaper, using specific data to create a service or an app, the revenue from which will be shared
While an open API is regarded as a gamble just like a paywall, journalist Matthew Ingram ethically notes that the use of an open API aims at "profiting from the open exchange of information and other aspects of an online-media world, while the
aywallis an attempt to create the kind of artificial information scarcity that newspapers used to enjoy."
An open API keeps news content free to the public while the newspaper makes a profit from the quality and usefulness of its data to other businesses. The open API strategy can be commended because it takes the pressure off of the news room to continually investigate and explore new means of revenue. Instead, the open API strategy relies on the interest and ideas of those outside the newsroom, to whom the site's content and data are attractive.
Bypassing paywalls
Due to implementation details involving web technologies, most paywalls that do not simply require the user to pay to view articles at all can be defeated.
Some online paywalls can be bypassed using the browser's "Private Browsing Mode" or "incognito", which make browser not to have trace, such as record browser history, cookie, cache, auto completed form fill, logged in website, or other traces.
Since many paywalls require
JavaScript
JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...
in order to function, the paywall itself might cease to do anything if the user disables scripting in their web browser, for example, through the
NoScript
NoScript (or NoScript Security Suite) is a free software extension for Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, other Mozilla-based web browsers and Google Chrome, written and maintained by Giorgio Maone, an Italian software developer and member of the Moz ...
extension.
As certain paywalls enforce the metering by setting a
HTTP cookie
HTTP cookies (also called web cookies, Internet cookies, browser cookies, or simply cookies) are small blocks of data created by a web server while a user is browsing a website and placed on the user's computer or other device by the user's w ...
, the user might simply have to clear cookies for that site, remove the site's permission to set them, or set their web browser to "session cookies only", which overrides the cookie's expiration date.
Some paywalls rely on obstructing the content, but not removing it. Therefore, clicking the web browser's "Reader Mode" may allow the content to be formatted in such a way that it is readable.
A few paywalls offer IP blocking which track users' IP address. This prevents them from switching to Private Browser (incognito) mode to view restricted content.
Website archival sites such as
Archive.today
archive.today (or archive.is) is a web archiving site, founded in 2012, that saves snapshots on demand, and has support for JavaScript-heavy sites such as Google Maps and progressive web apps such as Twitter. archive.today records two snaps ...
and the
Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...
often have full articles without the paywall, for articles that are already partially available without the paywall.
In November 2018,
Mozilla
Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...
removed an extension called Bypass Paywalls from the
Firefox
Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...
add-on store, but users can still install it from outside the store. A version for
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS ...
and
Chromium
Chromium is a chemical element with the symbol Cr and atomic number 24. It is the first element in group 6. It is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard, and brittle transition metal.
Chromium metal is valued for its high corrosion resistance and hardne ...
-based web browsers also exists.
Abandoned paywall initiatives
;''The New York Times'' — TimesSelect
:The original online-subscription program, TimesSelect, was implemented in 2005 in an effort to create a new revenue stream. TimesSelect charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to the newspaper's archives. In 2007, paid subscriptions were earning $10 million, but growth projections were low compared to the growth of online advertising.
In 2007, ''The New York Times'' dropped the paywall to its post-1980 archive. Pre-1980 articles in
PDF
Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...
are still behind the paywall, but an abstract of most articles is available for free.
;''
The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
''
:Originally online content was available only to print subscribers. This changed in 2008 under the supervision of James Bennet, editor-in-chief, in an effort to rebrand the magazine into a multi-platform business.
The Atlantic reintroduced a soft paywall on 5 September 2019 which allows readers to view five free articles each month, requiring a subscription to view articles after that.
;
Johnston Press
Johnston Press plc was a multimedia company founded in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1767. Its flagship titles included UK-national newspaper the '' i'', ''The Scotsman'', the ''Yorkshire Post'', the ''Falkirk Herald'', and Belfast's ''The News Letter'' ...
:In November 2009, the UK regional publisher of over 300 titles erected paywalls on six local newspapers' websites, including ''Carrick Gazette'' and the ''
Whitby Gazette
The ''Whitby Gazette'' was an English provincial newspaper published in Whitby, North Yorkshire.
History
The ''Whitby Gazette'' was founded on 6 July 1854 by Ralph Horne, a local printer, bookseller, stationer, bookbinder, paperhanger and shi ...
''. The model was dropped in March 2010; paid subscriber growth during the 4-month period was reportedly in the low double-digits.
;
Ogden Newspapers
Ogden Newspapers Inc. is a Wheeling, West Virginia based publisher of daily and weekly newspapers, magazines, telephone directories, and shoppers guides. The company was founded by H.C. Ogden in 1890, and is currently run by the family of his gra ...
:Throughout 2014, Ogden Newspapers' daily newspapers were placed behind a paywall. The system displayed teaser headlines and the first paragraph of the story. Paid subscribers had access to an e-edition of the newspapers as well as access to the publications via smart phone and tablet apps. Ogden's papers began removing the paywall in November 2016, in conjunction with launching redesigned, mobile and tablet friendly websites.
;
Quartz (publication)
''Quartz'' is an online news platform in English. It is focused on international business news. Quartz is privately held and was established in New York City in 2012. It is published in the United States with global business news and has specifi ...
:In April 2022, one of the major US business news websites dropped its paywall, which had been in place since 2019. The experiment showed that most of the publication's revenue still comes from advertising, not paid subscribers. All the information on Quartz's website became available for free. The membership option is designed only for those who want to receive exclusive editorial newsletters with analysis and insights on one big news item of the week.
Quartz, the business news site, drops its paywall.
. ''The New York Times'' (14 April 2022). Retrieved 15 May 2022.
See also
References
Further reading
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*Li, Sheng et al. (2016). "The Optimal Pricing Model of Digital Music: Subscription, Ownership or Mixed?" https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2884252
* {{citation , title=Publishers: Best paywall examples of 2022 , archiveurl= https://web.archive.org/web/20220816080236/https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/publishers-best-paywall-examples-of-2022/ , archivedate= 16 August 2022 , work=Whatsnewinpublishing.com , date= 15 August 2022 , url=https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/publishers-best-paywall-examples-of-2022/
E-commerce
Internet terminology
1996 introductions
1990s neologisms