Will Newspaper Readers Pay for Online Content?

The News Media is Still Searching for Ways to Make Money Online

Oct 15, 2009

Many readers say they would pay "nothing" to get their daily news online, but some believe studies suggest the contrary, offering hope to the publishers of newspapers.

News companies in search of ways to make money online with their journalism product are increasingly talking of building pay walls around their online content – charging for access to their sites. Yet few, apparently, have begun to act on those intentions.

Most news publishers remain in a planning phase, analyzing studies, picking through the results of surveys, and puzzling over contradictory predictions from the experts. News media trade groups searching for the way forward include:

If the future does include charging for content, some of the vendors who promise answers to the technological hurdles blocking that goal are:

Trade Groups Consider Ways for News Publishers To Charge for Online Content

Journalism Online, a proposed e-commerce, one-stop site, where news consumers could pay for access to a variety of publishers, has been courting newspaper publishers since April. But rather than steer its members directly to Journalism Online, the NAA began a review in June of a dozen different systems that newspapers could use to charge for access, according to PaidContent.org, which covers the business of digital media.

These include an offering from News Corporation, led by Rupert Murdoch, as well as using the payment processing software of the technology companies.

The American Press Institute, which released a study earlier this year urging newspaper publishers to adopt the paid-content approach, held a fall conference at its Reston, VA headquarters, and released the results of a survey of 118 U. S. newspaper publishers. The findings that conference participants pored over include these:

The Debate Within the Industry on Paid Sites

Adding to the data from their own studies and surveys which newspaper publishers must weigh in the balance when making a decision to charge for online content, are conflicting reports from surveys others have conducted.

Only 5% of respondents to a British survey conducted by PaidContent.org with the Harris polling firm claimed they would pay if their favorite news site started charging. Within days of the release of those results in late September, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, claimed their internal research showed different results.

Said Murdoch's digital news executive Ed Smit, "If you ask them yes or no, everyone says no...But if you do more in-depth research about what they consume, where and why and how they would be prepared to pay for it, you see very different results in line with our strategy."

Journalism Online Promising to Launch Soon

Among those offering the technology to conveniently charge for online news, Journalism Online claims it is leading the pack. The startup, created in April of this year by industry veterans Steve Brill, L. Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery Jr., said letters of intent to work with their firm have been signed by companies representing over 1,000 newspapers, magazines and online publishers.

Analyzing this news, Staci D. Kramer at PaidContent.org said: "The number of outlets shows the potential reach but the actual number participating in a beta launch likely will be much smaller - a chain with 80 papers may start with one or two, for instance."

Within months, Journalism Online promises to have a system operating and in use by hundreds of websites. For now, however, only a handful of newspaper companies have made the leap into a future of paid content on their websites.

Additional Sources

"Lots of Fee Ideas for Media Online," by Richard Perez-Pena, The New York Times, Sept.10, 2009

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