While some are hoping erecting paywalls will be the answer to newspapers' woes, others are still banking on an advertisement-based revenue model to pay off.

Both Paid Content and Guardian report that DMGT executives met with shareholders yesterday and courted "advertisers and eyeballs to remain largely free," writes Robert Andrews for Paid Content. This information comes from the Investor day slides DMGT has put online, which seem aimed at undermining the Times Online's paid online content strategy unveiled less than a month ago.

Gordon Brown is the latest public figure to voice his opinion on the feasibility of pay walls. Although Brown admitted that readers should be encouraged to pay and would probably do so for some online content, Brown believes there is a "whole sort of element of communication" that should remain free, according to Press Gazette.

When interviewed by Caitlin Moral in the Radio Times, Brown explained readers had been accustomed to not paying for online news content and this would make the task of putting content behind a wall more difficult.
"I don't think you are going to be able to put things behind paywalls in the way that people think...people will pay for certain things, and should pay for certain things, but I think there's a whole sort of element of communication that's got to be free."

Brown concluded by saying that people "mind paying for basic news."

John Yemma, the editor of The Christian Science Monitor, had some strong words for newspaper websites in an article he wrote for PaidContent: neither paywalls nor multimedia content will save you.

Although Yemma believes that content is king, no news organization has formulated an appropriate response to the problem of losing the value of content on the Internet. Erecting paywalls, like the ones News Corp and the New York Times will in the near future, is just like "sandbagging the tops of levies on the Mississipi," but they are not the answer. Paywalls can't hold the flood back, and the "Internet flood never recedes."
But, it is not multimedia that can hold back the flood either, Yemma claims. Even though users seem to be interested in YouTube videos and interactive games, no one says there will be a great demand for thoughtful interactive content, like graphs on Taliban stronghholds in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Although some media commentators believe in the power of multimedia content, Yemma concludes that "there's no evidence that users love these things so much that they flock to them, stay around, and convert to a news site's brand because of cool multimedia."

The future of newspaper websites for Yemma does not lie in paywalls or multimedia, but in creating relevant content.

Last week, News International's Times and Sunday Times announced their plans to charge for access to the papers' new websites (see paidContent's exclusive preview) which will be launched in May this year. The move was not surprising: News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch expressed a keen desire to charge for online content on several occasions last year, and enthusiasm for paid online content seems to be growing around the industry.

"It's got to be the case that charging for content is going to make more economic sense than just giving it away," Times editor James Harding told readers last week. As revenue from advertising falls, it is a view that is shared by many, but past experience has suggested that it might not necessarily be the case. After all, income from paying print readers has always helped newspapers, but it was always the advertising revenue that brought in big profits.