Top newspapers ready to charge online

NEW YORK/LONDON, (Reuters) – Three of the world’s  most influential newspapers have finally come to terms with the  notion that charging readers online is the only way to  survive.
There is far less agreement on how to go about that, the  publishers of The New York Times, The Times of London and the  Financial Times made clear at this week’s Reuters Global Media  Summit.
The New York Times Co’s launch of its long-awaited online  payment system early next year will be the latest effort to  convince readers to pay for what they have come to expect  free.
It will join News Corp’s Times of London, whose own tests  have achieved mixed results.
“We create very valuable, important content and we are  trying to ensure we get fairly compensated for it,” said News  Corp Chief Operating Officer Chase Carey.
Carey and other top executives speaking this week at the  Reuters summit are trying to calibrate prices and bundles of  products that will not alienate advertisers, fearful of steep  drop-offs in readers, and consumers, who are accustomed to free  access.
News Corp also owns the Wall Street Journal, which remains  one of the few newspapers to have generated a healthy online  business from subscriptions over the past decade.
But the strategy, which worked well for a business  publication, has failed to yield similar results for News  Corp’s most recent attempt to charge readers of the Times.
News Corp put all the news from the Times’ website behind a  pay wall, charging 1 pound for a day or 2 pounds for a week’s  access. Its online readership dropped by almost 90 percent.
Success will be measured over years, not a quarter, Carey  said. “The media always want to declare judgment in a  quarter.”
The New York Times, on the other hand, will employ a  different tactic. It plans to announce as early as January  prices for its “metered” model, which will charge readers after  they access a limited number of articles for free on  NYTimes.com.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr, publisher of the New York Times, took  pains to make clear the stark differences between the two  papers’ approach.
“Please don’t compare us to the Times of London,”  Sulzberger said. “They have a gate, a real wall. We aren’t  doing that. To compare us to them is just a false comparison.”
He added: “We want to be part of the digital ecosystem.”
It will be the second major attempt for the New York Times  to convince readers to pay, mindful of the publishing  industry’s challenge.
The U.S. and UK newspaper industries suffered an  unprecedented decline in advertising spending that pushed  papers into bankruptcy and resulted in thousands of job losses.  Print papers and magazines have also competed with free digital  news and entertainment venues for readers as circulation  revenue has plunged over this period.
The New York Times dallied with a pay strategy in 2005, but  pulled the plug by 2007 in its attempt to extract fees for  access to TimesSelect, featuring its award-winning columnists  such as Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich.
New York Times Chief Executive Janet Robinson called  TimesSelect a “success” but said they ended the service in  order to maximize its online readership.
The New York Times has spent the past year studying its  proposed new metered model, finding ideas from telecom and  cable companies, and even WeightWatchers, which charges users  for in-depth diet tips.
“We know that we have the opportunity, particularly with  the metered model, to manage this process,” said Robinson.
Robinson did not detail plans for the strategy, but made  clear there were distinctions between it and the Financial  Times, from which it drew inspiration. The Pearson Plc-owned  newspaper has charged people to read its news online since  2001.
Although the FT initially blocked all content from  non-subscribers, the site switched to a metered model by 2007  that allowed people to read a set number of articles each month  before asking for a fee.
Now digital revenue at the FT — which includes  subscriptions and advertising — represents 20 percent of total  revenue.
Speaking at the London arm of the Reuters Global Media  Summit, FT Chief Executive John Ridding said digital  subscriptions are steady and strong. These subscriptions have  helped it collect valuable data from its customers.
“We can understand where traffic is coming from on a  regional basis,” Ridding said. “So that naturally increases the  efficiency of the advertising.”
This “efficiency” has enabled the FT to charge 10 times  more for online ads tailored for its readers, Ridding said.
The more newspapers that start charging for online news,  the better, Ridding said. “We’ve always believed that quality  in journalism is worth paying for.”   (