Pay walls pick up steam with publishers

While The Economist called 2010 the “year of the pay wall,” 2012 seems to be the year that everyone has decided to go ahead and hop onboard. McClatchy recently decided to expand its pay wall trials to several more of its newspaper sites. “After more than a year of experiments and analysis on pay models, McClatchy newspapers will begin a robust test of a pay plan that looks like the right balance for our websites,” Anders Gyllenhaal, McClatchy vice president for news, wrote in a memo to employees. Just days later, the Chicago Tribune announced that it plans to charge readers for access to some of its online content, and the Chicago Sun-Times started charging online readers in December. Poynter’s Steve Meyers said the moves are “further proof that a majority of large newspaper companies now believe in some form of paid online content.”

The hold-out seems to be Hearst, which for the past year has reportedly been considering erecting a pay wall for the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate, but has yet to do so. Several magazines appear to have little interest in erecting pay walls as well. Executives at Conde Nast and Meredith indicated onstage at the paidContent conference in New York that subscriptions online are still not a priority for them. Both Bob Sauberg, president of Conde Nast, and Liz Schimel, chief digital officer at Meredith, suggested that “neither company is interested in erecting pay walls around their magazine websites,” according to Mashable’s Lauren Indvik. And of course, there are also still some pay wall naysayers. “For many newspapers, the decision to erect a pay wall has been a decision of last resort,” wrote Econsultancy’s Patricio Robles. “And for a seemingly good reason: despite the obvious need to generate the type of revenue that advertising often can’t provide alone, asking the consumers of your content to pay for the privilege can be a difficult undertaking.” But the good news, he added, is that new media upstarts intent on disrupting the business of newsgathering have thus far “proven to be expensive, less-than-fruitful ventures.”

• Most major newspaper groups are now experimenting with paywalls (Poynter)

• Chicago Tribune to leap over pay wall (ChicagoBusiness.com)

• For Some Magazine Publishers, Web Still Isn’t That Important (Mashable)

• McClatchy to Begin ‘Robust Test’ of Pay Model (JimRomenesko.com)

• McClatchy Newspapers Plan Paywalls (MediaPost)

• Digital Plays Outsized Role At McClatchy (NetNewsCheck)

• The great newspaper paywall debate continues (Econsultancy)