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ABC recently announced plans to initiate a paywall for some of its online content starting this June, hoping to alleviate some of its financial troubles and increase revenue.  The announcement comes in the wake of ABC's restructuring plans and its decision to eliminate 300 to 400 jobs through buyout propositions.

ABC's initiation of a paywall should come as no surprise to those watching media news over the past year.  Beginning with the success of the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal's moves to paid content, NewsCorporation, MediaNews and the New York Times followed in their path with plans to erect paywalls by 2011.  Just this week, the Washington Post announced its launch of Capital Business, a business weekly for  subscribers only.

These changes result from a steep decline in ad revenue for online newspapers over the past year, with American newspapers earning 17% less from advertising on the web than they had a year earlier, according to the Economist.  The Washington Post alone lost four percent of its revenue in the fourth quarter of 2009, and new paid content plans hope to alleviate some of the financial stress of the past year.

The "Year of the Paywall" is upon us and in a time where most newspapers seem to be gearing up to build one around their websites - the New York Times and the News Corporation Wapping publications are just a couple of examples - some executives believe there is still room for other revenue models to coexist with paid content.   

The head of digital media at News Corporation, Jonathan Miller, told delegates at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that "dual revenue streams" are likely to co-exist as media organizations try ways of making money online, according to Guardian.

This week, James Dunn, director of marketing for The New York Times, announced the newspaper is planning to offer its Book Review disaggregated from the rest of the Times content on mobile devices, such as e-readers, according to Poynter. Dunn hinted at the plan during a session at the Digital Publishing Alliance and E-Reader symposium at the University of Missouri's Reynolds Journalism Institute.

Dunn spoke to Poynter's Bill Mitchell and explained the NYT will release its Book Review for three different e-readers, starting with the Sony e-reader soon. The feature will then be available on Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. No details on when the iPad-friendly Book Review version will launch were given.

Some predict Apple's iPad will eat up the entire e-reader market, but it may not be too late for Amazon or Sony. These e-reader makers could get a competitive edge by offering a much cheaper device and a new technological development could make this happen.

A new chip by Freescale Semiconductor Inc. could help reduce the price of e-readers to less than $150 this year, according to Bloomberg.

Glen Burchers, a marketing director for the formerly Motorola-run company, said Freescale will begin to offer samples of a new processor that takes on the functions of other chips and reduces e-reader costs.

The man behind Google News page - criticized by news publishers for offering their content for free - thinks Google is simply helping them monetize their news content.

"We certainly see the value, and we think most of the publishers do too," Josh Cohen said at a PaidContent 2010 event last week, according to Media Post News.

Cohen explained that the aggregator only provides links to news sites, allowing them to earn more dollars or charge visitors.

Carlo de Benedetti, president of Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, whose publications include the daily newspaper La Repubblica and weekly magazine L'espresso, spoke in Paris about his support for paid content online and his belief that both Google and Internet providers should be pushed to share income with content producers.

De Benedetti gave a speech at SciencesPo university entitled "Internet and newspapers: the voice of democracy against populism," in which he outlined his belief that the Internet is crucial for spreading information more widely and is a force to be reckoned with, but that this does come with definite risks to democracy.

In terms of democracy, the fact that the Internet gives a clear platform to public opinion and allows any citizen to contribute to this, constitutes "extraordinary progress," De Benedetti said. However, there are serious dangers that accompany such a transformation, said De Benedetti, as such a system also gives a voice to the uninformed and the demagogues.

The importance of newspapers over other media

The vast abundance of information available online (although in many ways welcome) also leads to a complete lack of hierarchy of information. The fundamental role of newspapers, to organize and analyse the public debate, is threatened by this 'open-source' landscape.

Expanding on the importance of newspapers to a democracy, De Benedetti explained how unlike Internet or television, newspapers are capable of offering their readers not only information but the structure and context to allow them to come to their own conclusions on issues and events.

De Benedetti expressed concern and criticism about the state of television in Italy: as prime minister Silvio Berlusconi owns or controls a significant number of channels, and "commercial television imposes a kind of cultural hegemony." A citizen who stays informed only via television is weaker, he maintained, However, as De Benedetti noted, "television is already last century. It will continue to exist, but as a part of the Internet."

He does not believe that the Internet will soon replace newspapers, but suggests that newspapers can retain their traditional role as the "sherpas of information" on the Internet. "The presence of islands of quality news in the ocean of fragments of information... is absolutely necessary," he said.

Paid online content

De Benedetti is a strong supporter of paid online content. Consumers need to pay for news, he argued. Without the readers who were paying €1 each day for the print copy of La Repubblica, the paper would not have been able to carry out its ten questions to Berlusconi campaign, to which the prime minister eventually responded in November, hence proving its validity, De Benedetti said. "News that is free is worth nothing," he said: if you want your content to be valued you have to charge for it.

He admitted that what people require from a newspaper is changing, and that newspapers must embrace these changes and adapt their offering. "Now news is a commodity. You don't buy a paper to learnt what has happened: rather to understand why it has happened."

 "The news that goes deeper, that explains clearly, that verifies sources and adds context, is news that costs and as such, must be protected... whether on paper or on the web, on television or on the radio," De Benedetti said. Although the web has allowed newspapers to reach a large number of readers, continuing to offer news free of charge will soon "annihilate" daily newspapers and all quality news, he maintains. "Anybody can understand that paying for a good product is reasonable, even if it is online."

However, to make online content work, payment must be simple, De Benedetti stressed, something like Apple's iTunes. "Simplicity and 'automisation' of payment is absolutely key," he said. Journalism Online's Press+ has potential, he believes, as "it is difficult to imagine that consumers will willingly purchase content from multiple publishers who all use different platforms," and Journalism Online is offering a single payment system.

Charging online might have to be a gradual process, he explained, first involving making users pay for content that is not currently available online, and for content that is specially created for this aim, "if possible exclusive and elite."

Contributions from search engines...

Publishers should take a strong stance against search engines, De Benedetti suggested. "Google cannot exploit the content created by others without giving anything in return," he argued. "Aggregators do not respect the rules which protect intellectual property rights."

He pointed to the UK's Newspaper Licensing Agency's scheme as something which could serve as a model for the industry regarding obtaining proper compensation for copyrighted content. The NLA works on behalf of the UK's newspapers and licenses businesses organisations to make paper and digital copies of newspaper content, its website explains. The collected fees are distributed to the publishers.

... and internet service providers

It's not just Google who should have to share revenue with publishers, believes De Benedetti, but also internet service providers, who he said "continue to exploit - just like the search engines - the traffic generated by quality news content." Paradoxically, he added, "the more content that is free, the more the revenue of internet operators increases, and the more that of the publishers who created this content decreases." Publishers must seek to persuade telecom companies to share some of their revenue linked to Internet access.

De Benedetti's views on the necessity for paid online content seem clearly in line with those of several other publishers as charging consumers online seems to be becoming an increasingly more attractive and feasible option, as the New York Times and other smaller newspapers jump on board.. L'Espresso group's star newspaper, La Repubblica, currently offers free online access, however, charging only for e-editions and archives. The paper just started to charge for its iPhone application, offering subscriptions for €4.99 per month or €44.99 per year.

His interest in coming to some kind of revenue sharing agreement with search engines and aggregators is also something which is shared by other publishers, some of whom are demanding more control over their content. As De Benedetti noted, Google has recently been presenting a more conciliatory face to publishers, by making its 'First Click Free' scheme more flexible, for example. The Internet giant also offers newspapers a revenue-sharing opportunity on Google News in the form of Fast Flip, and more user-friendly ways to display news, such as Living Stories or Timeline. But it seems unlikely that the company is planning to offer any direct cut of its main ad revenue to publishers in the near future.

Suggesting that ISPs also have an obligation to pay content providers appears more controversial, but it is an idea that has arisen before. Last year in France Laurent Joffrin, editor of Libération, suggested a kind of tax on ISPs which would then be distributed to content producers. The UK National Union of Journalists proposed a similar measure to support public service broadcasting in April 2009. Such legislation would be likely to face significant opposition, however.

Gawker reported that there is a "heated turf war" going on at the New York Times over pricing of the paper's upcoming iPad application, quoting unnamed NYT sources.

The print side thinks it should control the pricing and marketing of the app, an Times source told Gawker, as it is another way to distribute the paper, and they would like to charge $20-30 per month for the app. Amazon's Kindle and other e-editions are under the print circulation department's control.

The digital side of the Times' operation is proposing charging $10 a month for the product, believing the print side's suggestions to be far too high. E-editions are also seen as overpriced by this department, according to Gawker. The NYT's Kindle edition costs $27.99 per month (so $336 a year).

More details have been released about the MediaNews paywall plans, which will charge for investigations and analysis but not for breaking news, Poynter Online reports.

Vice president for content development Howard Saltz said that investigations, enterprise, analysis, columns and reviews will be behind the paywall. "The kind of content that goes behind a wall is the kind of content that paid, professional journalists do," he told Poynter, "the kinds of things that you really couldn't count on bloggers and Web enthusiasts to do."

Articles will be free if it's necessary to remain competitive with other news sources, including breaking news and multimedia, he said.

Journalism Online's e-commerce service for publishers, Press+, has begun to release more details about the online payment system that allows publishers to implement a variety of payment methods for their digital content, according to eMedia Vitals.

Gordon Crovitz, a Journalism Online co-founder and a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, spoke to eMedia Vitals about the company's progress and about the online payment form that early adopters are leaning towards: a metered, segmented option.

Italian daily La Repubblica has launched a new paid version of its iPhone application, providing new content and services. In the eight months since the original app was launched, it has been downloaded by 150,000 users.

New offerings include editorials and in-depth articles from La Repubblica's top journalists, and "the best from the print paper on the debates and analysis surrounding the news."

The new version provides push notifications, alerting the user about breaking news even if the application is closed, or sending them messages when their selected football team scores a goal. Using key words of a reader's choice, the application will collect and save relevant articles that it finds to create a kind of press review.

French daily newspaper Le Figaro has announced details of its plans to charge for online content, offering three different tiers of subscriptions.

The three levels will be called Connect, Select and Business. Connect is a free subscription that allows access to free email newsletters with general, cultural and financial news. It also enables users to comment on articles and create a personalised front page.

From the loss of advertising revenue for newspapers to the emergence of a slew of multi-functional, deluxe e-readers, times are changing for the print industry - and they are doing so quickly.

So, what can we expect for the future of the printed word in the next couple years? Some media insiders spoke to CNN to offer some insight on what could be in store for newspapers.

German publisher Axel Springer has made good on its promises and put up online paywalls for two of its German newspapers, Paid Content reports.

Two of its newspapers, the Berliner Morgenpost and the Hamburger Abendblatt, are now charging for online content. It now costs €4.95 a month for access to all content on morgenpost.de. By contrast, abendblatt.de has a mixture of free and premium content, with a premium subscription priced at €7.95 a month. It appears to charge extra for content specific to the Hamburg region while providing national news for free. Subscriptions for both sites are renewed on a monthly basis.

The launch of Apple's iPad has garnered much optimism in the newspaper industry, driving hopes that the innovative tablet computer will be able to breathe some new life into an industry battered by an advertising downturn.

Much speculation has placed very high hopes on the capacity of the iPad and a slew of new generation e-readers to revamp the industry and bolster its business model. But, as Poynter Online's Bill Mitchell reports, the iPad will probably not be the solution to all of the newspapers' woes, but this sleek electronic device could play a substantial role in the migration of users from a cost-heavy past to a more efficient future.

Newsday, the Long Island daily, has attracted just 35 online-only subscribers to its website since it was put behind a pay wall last October, according to an article published yesterday in the New York Observer.

While only a few dozen have opted for the internet specific plan, which costs $5 a week or $260 a year, that figure does not take into account the print subscribers and Optimum Online customers in New York who already have free access to newsday.com. Optimum Cable is owned by Cablevision; who purchased Newsday for $650 million in May of 2008.  Newsday estimates that 75 percent of Long Island either has a print subscription or Optimum Cable.

The Financial Times (FT) will launch a new mobile app for Blackberry in the first half of this year, and an app for Android is in the works, managing director of FT.com Rob Grimshaw told Journalism.co.uk.

The FT recently launched a series of travel guide iPhone apps. And the paper already has an iPhone app, which has been downloaded 200,000 times, but has rejected charging for the app. "The fact is you only get one hit from that and then after that the revenue stream dries up," Grimshaw said. "We thought it would be much more sensible and favourable to make it part of the subscription model."

The subscription model has been successful for the paper, which now makes more from content revenue than from advertising.

When The Times Direct Delivery Service launched back in 2008, delivering the company's publications directly to the doorsteps of its newspaper subscribers living within the parameters of the M25 for free, it seemed a pretty good deal - particularly in light of the fact that the Independent's also newly launched delivery service was paid for.

At the same time however, the Times also increased its cover price to match the Daily Telegraph, hovering around the £1 ever since.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has launched a new mobile-optimised website for its Asia edition, and another for its Europe edition, allowing users to access regional news on any web-enabled mobile phone.

The Asia edition features updates from Asia.WSJ.com and includes text from the sections What's News, Markets, Technology, Opinion, Personal Finance and Life & Style, as well as additional market-specific news from China and India.

The Europe edition, from Europe.WSJ.com, features similar news sections, except with market-specific news from the UK and Europe and a section titled Europe In-Depth. It will update as often as the website itself.

Yesterday, following months of deliberation, the New York Times announced that it was to go forward with charging online, with a plan to implement a metre system in 2011. It is the biggest publisher yet to lay out paywall plans, and the move is undoubtedly highly significant for the newspaper industry as it struggles with a failing business model. Will this save the New York Times? Could it signal the end for free online content?

Similar to that used by the Financial Times, a metered payment system would allow readers to access a certain number of articles free per month, and then request payment for more: a flat fee for unlimited access. Print subscribers will continue to have free access, even those who subscribe to just the Sunday paper. An online subscription will also cover access via smartphones. The first click free from search engines, which is used by the Wall Street Journal, will also apply. More details such as pricing have been released yet, and the publisher's statement said that the next year will be used to build "a new online infrastructure designed to provide consumers with a frictionless experience across multiple platforms."

A metered system rather than a more fixed paywall has the advantage of not alienating the casual reader who can still visit the site free on occasion, and not angering journalists by blocking off specific articles (an issue with the Times' previous attempt at charging online, TimesSelect). "It allows NYTimes.com to remain a vibrant part of the search-driven Web," reads the Times memo sent to staff by executives Arthur Sulzberger and Janet Robinson, published by Poynter.

It does have potential flaws, however. Before the NYT's announcement, Reuters writer Felix Salmon criticized the way that the FT's flat fee system does not actually work like a metre: suggesting that instead the New York Times should implement a payment process under which readers are charged depending on how much content they consume. And presumably those who are determined not to pay will find ways around the paywall, using multiple accounts, for example.

The Financial Times welcomed the New York Times' decision, according to the Guardian, with CEO John Ridding saying "We welcome the New York Times' new online business model, which is similar to the FT's. We believe in the value of quality journalism and we are pleased that others feel the same way." The FT recently announced that for the first time, its content revenue was greater than its advertising revenue in 2009, after raised cover prices and more online subscribers signing on.

The FT now has 121,000 subscribers. Going by the pricing on the FT's website, it seems that they pay between €186 and €363 per year (depending on whether they choose a standard or premium subscription). Working on the assumption that about half of subscribers pay for each (and that the FT is not counting joint print-online subscribers in this figure), that would mean that the paper could be bringing in something in the region of €33 million from its paywall in direct revenue from readers. And the Wall Street Journal, which offers a different kind of paywall, has an estimated one million paying online subscribers.

This figure is encouragingly high, but how much encouragement can the NYT take from this? As a general interest paper with the most popular website out of all US papers, the Times has a far bigger pool of potential subscribers. But the FT's specialist financial content is something that more people might see as worth paying for. Indeed for some, it is news that is necessary for their business. And with the FT's main international rival the WSJ also charging, there is not an ubiquity of similar news free on the web.

The New York Times does seem to have a better shot at making charging for online content work than other US general interest newspapers. Its status as the number one national paper is largely unquestioned. It has always made a greater proportion of its revenue from content than most newspapers do, receiving 55-60% of its income from advertising compared to a typical figure of 80-85%. The current price for a print subscription is high, at between $550 and $770 a year, depending on location and offers, but many people are still prepared to pay this: more than 800,000 continue to renew their subscriptions, according to the NYT's David Carr.

Given the paper's financial situation, it is unsurprisingly that the paper is looking at changing its business model. Despite its reputation and high number of website visitors, financial constraints have pushed the New York Times into carrying out lay-offs and pay cuts. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim came to the publisher's aid last year with a $250 million loan, but if the paper is to continue to produce top-quality journalism, it needs a steady revenue stream.

Poynter writer Rick Edmonds maintains that the NYT's decision to charge "makes business sense." He believes that the Times will not "lose any meaningful number of unique visitors," and agrees with Ken Doctor that paying users represent a significant targeting advertising opportunity. The Times' memo sent to employees said that executives expect that "digital advertising will continue to be the major contributor to our success on the Web."

Slate editor Jack Shafter is critical of the NYT's strategy, judging it "too easy for freeloaders to game their way around it" and "a waste of the gargantuan audience they've attracted." He suggests that looking into improving web advertising would be a better way to go forward. Jeff Jarvis argues on his blog BuzzMachine that the NYT's plan will end up charging "the readers who are worth the most while serving free those who are worth least," which he believes does not make sense. 

With the New York Times on board, efforts to charge online are likely to speed up. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp publications are expected to introduce paid online content in coming months, and there is an increasing sentiment that it just doesn't make sense to give away content that should be seen as valuable. Not everybody agrees, however, and over at the UK paper with the most popular website, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has said that his publication will remain free online. Others will undoubtedly stick to a similar course and provide free alternatives, making it harder for those who do charge. Which business model will eventually prove more successful? 

After a year of internal debate, the New York Times has finally decided to charge online and has settled on a paywall style. It plans to adopt a metered system in 2011 which will permit readers to access to a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe - similar to that of the Financial Times.

The newspaper had been deliberating between three types of pay strategies, the first being a more traditional pay wall similar to that of The Wall Street Journal, in which some parts of the site are free and some subscription-only. The second option was an NPR-style membership model and the third the adopted FT metered style.

With newspapers struggling to make a profit as advertising revenues decrease - just in the last quarter of 2009, American newspapers earned 17% less from online advertising than they had done a year earlier - many newspapers have turned to offering their online content for a fee.

The mobile offerings of L'Equipe are profitable, says Sébastien Valere, VP Marketing and Operations of L'Equipe 24/24 in France, speaking at the WAN-IFRA conference 'Using sports news to optimise your revenues'.

91% of the French have a mobile phone, with the operators including Orange, SFR, Bouygues and Free. 25% of mobile subscribers access the network through 3G, which means easier access to mobile data and surfing. He expects that two years from now, 75% of the population will have a smart phone, up from 35% now. The iPhone has been successful in France, and more devices will arrive on the market. Unlimited access subscriptions are offered, with subscriptions available for around €60 per month. Smart phones translate into massive content use.

L'Equipe is a global media brand, with a daily newspaper, a website with 5 million unique visitors per month, as well as offerings in television, radio and mobile. It has 18 million customers a month, mostly male, and reaches 50% of the upper-socio-professional advertising category. Usage peaks at night, although the goal is to reach people throughout the day.

It appears that Rupert Murdoch has been making good on his promises this week. A Massachusetts newspaper owned by his Dow Jones Local Media Group has begun charging readers for online news, News & Tech reports.

This comes after the announcement that News International will block aggregator NewsNow from all its websites. Murdoch has previously accused news aggregators of theft.

The Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts, this week started charging readers a fee to access articles from its website SouthCoastToday.com. Users are still able to access 10 articles a month for free, after which only a short excerpt is displayed with a prompt to log in or subscribe. Rates vary, up to $3.56 for new subscribers.

A Scottish MP has called for a free newspaper scheme, offering young people in Scotland a newspaper of their choice for free and for a year.

In an opinion piece in The Scotsman, Scottish Labour's culture spokesperson Pauline McNeill refers to the current transformations in the newspaper industry as "the biggest crisis in its history". She calls for yearly subscriptions to be offered to teenagers on their 18th birthdays to encourage them to become long-term readers.

Towards the end of last year, Rupert Murdoch, head of News International, spoke out against news aggregators. In an interview with Sky News Australia, he condemned the likes of Google as nothing more than "thieves", intent on stealing content from his newspaper's websites for their own benefit. The media mogul has long wielded threats of removing all News International articles from search indexes and implementing stringent paywalls around all his websites by the end of 2010.

It's only January, but Murdoch has already set about putting his plans into action: On Friday, the Guardian reported that News International is to prevent the aggregator NewsNow.co.uk from linking to content found on the Times Online website, by changing its search engine settings via the robots.txt protocol.