Thinking about paywalls? Read this first...

With the paywall debate having no end in sight, it is sometimes nice to step back and examine the lay of the land, particularly for regional and small publishers.

Having been accused by his most prolific critic as suggesting solutions that only work for large-scale, national publishers, and with a close friend finding himself the Managing Editor of a local newspaper in Montana, Steve Outing (pictured), of EditorandPublisher.com has done just that.

Whilst his tips come from US case studies there is still plenty there for panicking publishers to step away from the paywall, at least for a little longer.

He argues that a recent American Press Institute study demonstrates that paywalls only work in certain markets. One newspaper, he states, could maintain a paywall because it was the only paper in town. Another, though, couldn’t sustain the model due to competition from a local free website.

So what is the alternative? One suggestion, with his editor-friend in mind, is a five-point plan of generating revenue from the digital output whilst protecting the print product, particularly of use to those publishers who operate within tourist towns:

1. Offer paid subscriptions to the newspaper that also include free access to a digital-replica edition.

2. Offer paid digital-replica edition subscriptions that mimic the paper in electronic form, for those second-home owners in the area and others who want to keep up with...news and developments and prefer not to receive the print edition by mail when the news is several days old.

3. Continue to keep all your Web site content -- including locally produced news -- free to all. And yes, that includes print subscribers who might be tempted to save money, cancel the print edition, and rely on the free Web site.

4. Have your Web manager focus on better ad targeting, in order to identify out-of-area users as potential tourists interested in hotels, camping, excursions, etc. and show them relevant ads.

5. Most importantly, devise other reasons for paying print and/or digital subscribers to keep paying -- primarily by value-added online, digital, mobile and even physical extras not available to non-paying users of the Web site.

This is expanded for those who may not have such a tourist trade to include advice on finding other incentives for people to subscribe to your newspaper, such as a free breaking-news mobile service that would otherwise be charged for.

Outing will have to wait if his advice satisfies his critic but it is certainly worth a look by anyone who has a Google-sized headache from the paid-content debate.

Has Google caved to pressure from Murdoch?

Google have announced that newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through their site, reports the BBC.

This action follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.

Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can now prevent unrestricted access to subscription websites.

Users would now start to see a registration page if they click on more than five articles in a day.

"Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free," Google senior business product manager Josh Cohen said in a blog post.

"Now, we've updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing."

The BBC describes how Rupert Murdoch had earlier accused firms such as Google of profiting from journalism by generating advertising revenue by linking readers to newspaper articles.

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones told the website that the concession was relatively minor but Mr Murdoch might see it as vindication of his decision to take on Google.

Cohen also stated in his blog post how, besides First Click Free, Google would also offer publishers the option where they would index and treat as “free” any preview pages that were made available to them – generally the headline and first few paragraphs.

He said that because the content would be identical to what a normal user would see, this would not breach Google’s strict “no cloaking” policy – where the page that a web crawler sees and indexes is different to the one seen by the end user.

Will JP's plunge into paywalls pay off?

The eyes of the local news industry will be on six small weekly newspapers owned by Johnston Press, as their websites are used in a paywall trial, Holdthefrontpage has revealed.

Since the story - which was followed up by the Guardian and Press Gazette along with other journalism blogs - broke, JP has confirmed the names of the six paid-for titles involved in the ground-breaking trial, which will run for three months.

They are the Worksop Guardian in Nottinghamshire, the Ripley and Heanor News in Derbyshire, the Whitby Gazette in North Yorkshire, the Northumberland Gazette, the Ayrshire-based Carrick Gazette and the Southern Reporter in Selkirk.

Visitors will now be unable to access content beyond the homepage unless they pay £5 for a 3-month subscription (the equivalent of 40p per week).

HTFP stated how four of the six have average weekly circulations of under 10,000 and one, the Carrick Gazette, sells just 2,572 copies a week.

JP's digital strategy director Lori Cunningham told HTFP: "It's a small scale trial so we can better understand what the consumer dynamics are around paid-for content.”

She added that the company currently had "no plans" to extend the trial beyond three months or to roll it out to other titles.

However HTFP reported that they have seen an internal company memo which makes clear that the trial will be extended if it proves a success.

"The switch to a paid-for model is part of a broader roll-out across Johnston Press and in line with industry moves in this area to find a sustainable business model going forward. Customers are used to paying for content in-paper and we are simply transferring this thinking online," the memo stated.

Meanwhile, Trinity Mirror indicated it would not rule out introducing a paywall on its titles although it has no current plans to do so.

Digital director Chris Bunyan said: "Now is a time when a lot of publishers are experimenting and over the years we'll see some failures and successes. We wouldn't rule it out."

Whether the trial is a success remains to be seen. Kevin Ward, editor of the Newsquest-owned Worcester News has previously suggested that local titles are enough of a “niche” product to be able to successfully charge for content.

However some of the comments on HTFP would suggest otherwise. One reader stated how he “wouldn’t visit for free, let alone pay for it,” complaining about the lack of interactive content on one of the sites involved in the experiment.

Another suggested that all such a trial would prove is how readers would be unwilling to pay for a “poor product” unless JP invested in quality copy.

Paywalls and Social Media at the Society of Editors 2009 conference

Could regional news sites charge too?

One theme that dominated the recent Society of Editors conference was how to make paid content work. Whilst national newspapers look at possible dates for setting up paywalls on their news sites, regional papers were also considering getting in on the act.

Holdthefrontpage has reported how Worcester News editor Kevin Ward asked the question as to whether regionals could ever charge for their content, at a seminar on the future of the industry.

In a discussion that featured both national and regional editors as well as head of Google UK Matt Brittin, Mr Ward put forward that regional news was a sufficiently “niche” product to make the charging model work successfully.

According to the website, Mr Ward told the conference: "What we produce is niche. Nobody else sits in our courts every day. Nobody else scrutinises our public bodies.”

Mr Ward continued by asking whether, as a result, regional papers had "more opportunity to charge for the web" than their national counterparts.

Mr Brittin responded by saying: "Looking for local news is one of the biggest activities online. There are big opportunities there."

The Times: Not "if" but "when"

The Guardian states how James Harding, the editor of the Times, gave the clearest indication yet of how News International is going to start charging for its journalism online.

Confirming that The Times will indeed start charging for content, he told the conference: "From spring of next year we will start charging for the digital edition of the Times. We're working on the exact pricing model, but we'd charge for a day's paper, for a 24-hour sign-up to the Times. We'll also establish a subscription price as well."

According to the Guardian he also warned against the idea of micro-payments for individual articles.

He said: "You have to be very careful with article-only economics," he said. "You will find yourself writing a lot more about Britney Spears and a lot less about Tamils in northern Sri Lanka."

6,200 comments following transfer day coverage

Social media was another key area of discussion at the conference, according to reports on Holdthefrontpage. One editor who championed its use was Hull Daily Mail boss John Meehan, who described how their use of it to cover transfer deadline day for the local football team Hull City, led to an “avalance of interactivity.”

He stated how the paper’s use of live blogging functionality and social media, as part of their coverage, led to 6,200 comments from readers – one every five seconds.

"The immediacy of the web has made timed newspaper editions obsolete," Mr Meehan told the conference.

Holdthefront page reports how fellow panellist Martin Wright, associate editor of NWN Media which publishes the Leader in North Wales, said Twitter was now the tenth biggest referrer to its main website, leaderlive.co.uk.

Trinity Mirror head of multimedia David Higgerson said the Liverpool Echo had used Twitter to break the news of the result of the trial of the killers of Rhys Jones.