The Daily Advertiser has announced plans to launch ‘new subscription packages’ for some of their newspapers, with at least 8 mastheads charging readers to view their online content.
Up until now they have provided content for free.
The Advertiser released a story on April 12 stating “New subscription offerings are being introduced across eight ACM titles in south-west NSW. No decisions have been made relating to other ACM mastheads.”
The move will be seen as a bold one. The Milton Ullaulla Times has been trialling a paywall for a number of months and currently charge $1.08 per week for a 4 week trial for their online content.
The Advertiser’s story stated “Its community-based journalists use the latest in newspaper and website publishing technology allowing local news to be published immediately online from the field.”
Although this sounds impressive, a simple internet connection allows anyone the ability to do so on any website, not just those which are news based.
With printing costs rising across the newspaper industry it will allow companies such as Fairfax to print less copies of their hard copy product, however, staff will still be required to add the digital content to the online sites. The move will create a new revenue stream, however, has associated costs.
A large number of metropolitan based mastheads have had pay walls since the mid 2010s.
The U.S. based, Wall Street Journal set up a pay wall in mid 2007 and was one of the first to do so.
There are typically two methods to pay walls. The ‘Soft’ allows users to view a specific number of articles before requiring paid subscription. The ‘Hard’ requires paid subscription before any of their online content can be accessed.
It is unclear which version Fairfax will be implementing.
The Times currently places the vast majority of its stories online and does so for free.
Newspaper spokesperson Trish Stadtmiller said, “We have a lot of older readers in the twin towns who can’t access online content. Printing isn’t cheap for the business, but a large part of what we do is catering to the needs of our community. Our current model works for us and our readers at the moment. We print once a week and we put nearly all of our content from our print product online over the next few weeks. Any breaking news is put up as soon as possible including, fires, car crashes and anything else where it is in the public interests to know as soon as is practicable.”
It is unclear if the Harden Murrumburrah Express will be one of the mastheads which will implement a pay wall. The newspaper moved its offices to Cootamundra in 2012. The Twin Town Times commenced in January 2014 and has enjoyed wide-spread community support from local businesses and local readers since, establishing itself as an independently owned locally run business which employs locals and maintains a local office shop front in Neill St Harden.
The Express recently dropped back to just 8 pages from 12 for one of their editions this year, whilst the Times consistently produces 16 pages a week.
Former Times Editor Matthew Stadtmiller said, “If a pay wall goes up, something actually has to be behind the wall. The Times print over 30 stories a week and currently offer great online packages for advertisers. It will be interesting to see what happens with this one. It must be asked will businesses want to advertise online if they are only reaching a limited number of readers due to a pay wall? It could be counter productive.”
