News Corp COO ponders overhaul of WSJ's paywall system, others still don't think it will work

Posted by Nestor Bailly on November 13, 2009 at 3:00 PM

Chase Carey, News Corp COO, is unhappy at the state of the Wall Street Journal's online paid content arrangements, despite it being one of the few profitable and successful paywalls.

Carey specifically referred to the fact that readers can view WSJ content for free through a google search but have to pay if they go directly through the site. By merely copy-pasting the headlines of articles behind the paywall into google, readers can freely access content that others pay for.

"We don't want people going though a backdoor, or other channels," to access the Journal, says Carey, who did not comment on when or even if he would change the current WSJ structure.

Meanwhile, former Daily Mirror editor David Banks gave his opinion on paywalls during a guest lecture at the University of Sunderland.

"Everybody talks about paying to break through the paywall, I don't know anyone who quite knows how Rupert plans to do this. Nobody talks about it, they just say 'Oh yeah, well if Rupert says it then it'll work."

Although he is not optimistic about the prospects of paid online content, Banks presented an idea of how it could work, based on the client/viewer buying advertisers' products and then getting access to the site. An interesting idea, but it seems to devalue the content and prioritize advertisers and their profits rather than the content sources.

Another idea has advertisers paying for successful ads, where each time a customer comes in with a coupon or story about the product, they pay the publication or distributor a reward or fee.

"I think if you can make the advertiser pay and sponsor the readers which, by and large, they've been doing for centuries anyway, that's a possibility, but I don't think for a second Rupert's going to be able to make people hand over money or even micro-purchases to PayPal," Banks says.

We will have to wait and see if advertising innovation or online subscriptions (or a combination) will be the saving grace for traditional news publishers in the digital domain.

Sources: Business Insider

Josh Halliday blog