Should Online Newspaper Content Be Free?
September 1, 2011 at 3:16 pm
There is a debate raging in the media at the moment about whether newspapers should have their content online and whether readers should have to pay in order to access the content. Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper The Times has already hidden its content behind a paywall and it is expected that his other UK paper The Sun will follow soon. But are they right to do this?
It is understandable for a newspaper to want people to pay for its content. However, there is no shortage of news available on the Internet for those who don’t want to pay for it. So the danger for newspaper websites is that, as soon as they hide their content behind a paywall, readers simply vote with their feet and visit other newspaper websites or places like the BBC where they can get their fill of news for free every day.
When The Times put up its paywall, statistics suggested that it lost around 90% of its online readership[1]. So it’s obvious that a large proportion of web readers will immediately ditch their favourite online news source if they want to charge for their content.
But what’s the solution for newspaper websites? They can’t simply allow their content to go for free and they can’t flood the web pages with advertising to raise funds because that would also cause readers to run off to their competitors. This leaves them with a bit of a dilemma as to what they can do.
An answer could be to make its major news available online for free, but make the opinion and comment aspects of the newspaper either newspaper-exclusive or put them behind a paywall. This way, readers can get their fix of the news from The Times for free, but will have to either buy the newspaper or a web subscription if they want to access the columnists they enjoy reading and the analysis which differentiates newspapers from each other.
The problem of how to monetise online content is going to loom large over the media until someone finally finds a solution to it that actually works. Perhaps The Times thought simply locking free-loaders out would solve the issue, but the statistics suggest it hasn’t.
In fact, it seems that the only people who aren’t bothered by the problem are readers. There will always be someone providing the news for free, so for them, it isn’t worth paying for.
[1] Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jul/20/times-paywall-readership
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