Paywalls: NYU professor explains what will (and won't) work

Posted by Alisa Zykova on September 8, 2010 at 8:55 AM

It isn't enough for newspapers to simply "be online," New York University Journalism Professor Jay Rosen told Le Monde. They must also put in place a payment plan, cater to the iPad or decide on a strategy that is "more radical," because Web-based ad revenues will not make up for declining print incomes.

The economic downturn was blamed for the drop in print ads, but publishers failed to recognise that advertisers would not be coming back, he said. A suitable economic model for dailies functioning alongside the Internet and tablets will have to include numerous revenue sources, each one delivering features on a smaller scale. For example, Rosen said that dailies could have one free and one payable application, have a part of the site that's free, or have specific information as paid-for features, but leave articles that contribute to the reputation of the title for free. Furthermore, the outlets could sell related products and services.

The difficulty might also be in sustaining the structure of the venture, taking into consideration that it was initially constructed to accommodate a different economic model. Rosen added that it might be simpler for titles that only recently emerged onto the market.

Rosen, who also write the PressThink blog, told Le Monde he is not "very optimistic" about Rupert Murdoch's decision to transform UK daily The Times's website into an entirely paid-for outlet. In order to get an audience to pay, the product must be "superior," compared to the competition. Prominent papers assume that they deliver high-quality content and it may be difficult to convince them that they must rev up their content even more if they adopt a paywall.

Last month, The New York Times Company began testing a pay wall with its Worcester-based Telegram & Gazette title, according to paidContent. In a letter to readers, the paper explained that it is "expensive to provide the most complete coverage of local news" and that the business was "labor intensive," mentioning that the "financial support needed to fulfill the mission cannot be obtained solely from print subscribers and advertisers."

Rosen pointed out that the paywall venture that The Times plans to launch in 2011 will deal with two kinds of readers: those who are willing to pay because to them the The Times' content is valuable and they wish to keep the paper, as well as general users of the site who log on a few times a day and therefore find it "practical to have access" to most of the content.

Meanwhile, Rosen said that tablets, such as the iPad, are not the saviours of print media, despite what some may think: "Some media owners are pleased and think the iPad will save them. They see it as a salvation that will extract them from the 'chaos' of the Web and bring them back to the heyday of big media. Is a fantasy."