As paywalls go up across the web, most notably those implemented by the Times and Sunday Times last week, one comes tumbling down, reports Press Gazette. Johnston Press, a UK regional publisher with over 300 titles across the country, ended its paywall experiment this week.

In November of 2009, Johnston Press implemented various paid content strategies on four of its English titles and two Scottish titles. Some websites offered "teaser" content that suggested the reader buy the paper version to finish the article, others required user registration, and a few titles erected a paywall, allowing readers 3 months of paid content for £5.

Johnston Press' annual report, published earlier this month, gave an optimistic outlook on the ability of JP papers to implement a paywall successfully.

"As our content on local communities is often unique, we believe that we are well positioned to test whether users would be prepared to pay for their content delivered through local websites," it said.

As newspapers scramble to put up paywalls, produce content for the iPad, or revamp their websites, others are trying to rely upon a nonprofit model, where revenue isn't driven by site traffic and journalists can feel secure enough to report on what's important rather than what sells. Some nonprofit news ventues, such as California Watch and the Texas Tribune, have thus far succeeded. But Alan Mutter, a journalist-turned-media consultant, writes at his blog that a nonprofit news model cannot sustain the future of the news.

According to figures he calculated himself, it would take $88 billion to fund the level of reporting provided by U.S. newspapers today. This daunting figure, which disregards newspaper and broadcast journalism, is about a third of the $307.7 billion given to charities in the U.S. in 2008.

A new voluntary code of practice was signed by the Australian sports administrative authorities and leading media groups to resolve disputes between the groups that have gone on for years. Ongoing disputes and press coverage boycotts have centred over restrictions sports administrations had created which previously blocked news agencies from covering cricket and Australian Rules Football matches, Agence France-Presse reported today.

This new code is likely the first of its kind, and ends several restrictions the sports administration had placed on the media, such as not allowing the use of sports news and images online, including the number of updates on the events and the sites allowed to use sports images. They also aimed to restrict sports coverage on mobile platforms. Many media groups believed to be the restrictions to infringe on press freedom, and those that did not agree to them were not allowed to cover certain events.

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A couple of weeks ago, the German tech company, Neofonie, launched its version of the tablet: the WePad. This tablet, a device that looks and sounds just like the Apple iPad, could become Apple's fiercest competitor in Europe.

It is no secret that deals between publishers and Apple have faced obstacles in recent weeks. These disagreements have raised the question of whether newspapers and magazines will be able to reap the financial benefits of the iPad. As American publishers get on board with the iPad, German publishers seem to be flocking towards the WePad.

Last week, the WePad finalized a distribution deal with Europe's biggest publisher, Gruner + Jahr, according to TechCrunch. The company is responsible for over 250 newspapers and magazines in Europe.
TechCrunch reports that Axel Springer, the publisher of Europe's largest newspaper, BILD, is also in talks to use the innovative electronic device soon. German publisher Hubert Burda is also said to be negotiating a deal to use the WePad.

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.

Independent News and Media last week unveiled premium content across its 13 regional newspaper Web sites in Ireland. The company has just sold its star property the Independent to Alexander Lebedev.

The newspapers will continue carrying a considerable amount of free content across the newspaper Web sites, Patrick Lenehan, CTO of Independent Digital, told SFN. The non-newspaper sourced content was built up over the past 18 months.

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If crowd-sourced journalism is part of the future of news media, should there be awards for the best of it? [Guardian]

Blogging, image editing, and HTML--all skills in high demand by online media. [DepthReporting.com]

The BBC decides to delay its iPhone apps, pending review of the BBC Trust. [Guardian]

BBC presenter John Humphrys thinks newspapers ensure a "robust system of democracy," and thus doesn't mind paying for them. [The Sun]

Trinity Mirror's Fulham and Hammersmith Chronicle blasts competing freesheet H&F News in local ad campaign. [Press Gazette]

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.

When Sir Ray Tindle launched 16 new titles last month, he commented that it was "a unique occasion because it may be the first time an established newspaper house has tried launching its way out of a very deep and very serious recession which has put much of our industry in jeopardy," indeed countless newspapers have been forced to make significant cutbacks and even stop operations altogether.

It is always interesting therefore, to see new start-ups and initiatives, even in a hostile economic climate, with journalists effectively launching their way out of the recession.

Hold the front page has today reported that a new news agency devoted entirely to reporting 'true life' stories, called Sell That Story has been launched.

The initiative is the idea of John Jeffay, ex editor of the Manchester Metro News and MEN columnist Angela Epstein. The new agency's website invites people to call or send an email concerning the details of their real life story, and then Jeffay and Epstein will then decide whether the story could be written about and sold to a tabloid or magazine.

Procrastinators now have a new tool to help them postpone their to-do list while gaining a wider grasp of the daily news: Random Guardian. The browsing tool offers users a chance to check out a random page from that day's Guardian with the click of a button.

Visiting the website http://random-guardian.appspot.com/ brings your browser to a random Guardian page with a toolbar at the top which offers the clickable option to "view another" when you are done with your current page. The app's creator, Guardian software developer Daniel Vydra, was inspired by the idea of a "chatroulette for news" mentioned at a presentation on new media.

The result is a way to browse the online version of the Guardian as one might do with the paper version. With the advent of searchable, indexed newspaper websites, no longer do consumers have to flip through each page of articles until they arrive on one that they were specifically looking for. Now, readers can gain a wider grasp of the news and perhaps a newfound interest in surprising topics or articles.

Le Monde announced Tuesday that, starting March 29, it will be offering a new subscription package encompassing all media on which the top French newspaper is offered. Currently, the site offers free access to much of its online content, articles from that day's print newspaper, which are relegated to a subscription-only archive the next day, and there is a free iPhone application, which has received over 1.4 million downloads to date. Upon the implementation of a paywall, Le Monde's print edition will no longer be available online to anyone but web subscribers.

The move comes as part of an effort to create what Eric Fotterino, CEO of Le Monde, calls a "global brand."

"The different platforms, paper and digital, are not competing but complementary," he said.