NY Newsday, a newspaper that focuses on Long Island and New York City, will begin imposing a $5 per week charge on access to its website for many of its news items.
Newsday will continue offering free access to those who have paper subscriptions or who have Internet access via Cablevision, which owns the paper.
Newspapers are struggling to find ways to build revenues as the newspaper industry has failed to figure out how to drive revenue in an age of open access to news items and advertising revenues have fallen off a cliff due to e-bay and Craigslist.
Newsday is hardly the first paper to charge for content. The New York Times attempted to charge for access via its Times Select service, that put may of its op-eds and columnists behind a pay to view wall. It was a miserable failure for the Times, and they dropped the charge.
The Wall Street Journal continues to charge for some of its services, but that's the exception for news content rather than the rule.
Given the way that the Newsday site is arranged, I doubt anyone will miss visiting the news site in favor of other sites and the paper will be forced to reconsider.
No comments:
Post a Comment