Will Australians pay for news online?

Posted by Elizabeth Redman on January 13, 2010 at 11:44 AM

A new survey shows that most Australians are unwilling to pay for news online, as the national newspaper The Australian prepares for a corporate restructure ahead of implementing its paywall plans.

Just over 70% of Australians would not consider paying to read online news, according to research published on Australian news website Crikey. Among 18-24-year-olds, the figure was even higher, at 76%.

'News junkies' who check for online news several times a day were less likely to pay for news than those who only read online news daily or weekly. And those who lived in urban areas in states with limited access to broadsheet newspapers appear to be more likely to pay for online news than those who live, for example, in the nation's capital Canberra, where broadsheets from all over the nation are readily available.

The research was conducted at Swinburne University, in conjunction with the World Internet Project. The sample size was 800 respondents, which means that the figures for individual states are much smaller and should be read with caution.

This is bad news for News Limited, publisher of national newspaper The Australian, which has announced plans for a corporate restructure which will involve creating a separate corporate division for the paper. This is expected to allow the broadsheet more flexibility in negotiating printing and distribution arrangements with other divisions of News Limited.

News Limited chairman John Hartigan said that the restructure reflected "the significant expansion of our ambitions" for the paper. These included double-digit growth targets for revenue, profit and online traffic, for a publication that is expected to be the first of Murdoch's Australian mastheads to establish paywalls.

Murdoch's paywall plans have many in the media industry watching closely. With their favourite newspaper behind a paywall, will readers behave like they say they will when surveyed?

Sources: Crikey, The Content Makers, The Australian