News sites to adopt pay wall

  • Breaking
  • 24/05/2013

The Whakatane Beacon has joined the Ashburton Guardian and the NBR in charging people who want to read its website.

The Listener does it too, but none of the major news players in New Zealand have, yet.

The Ashburton Guardian made the changes six months ago.

"If you want to know about Ashburton you have got to come to us, people have no choice really. If they value our journalism they'll pay for it," says editor Coen Lammers.

He says subscription numbers have since been significant for a paper of their size. Digital subscriptions are on target and print sales have actually risen.

"This pay wall system would work quite well in areas like Southland, Otago, The Otago Daily Times where they are the main provider of news in that district," says Mr Coen.

The Whakatane Beacon has embraced the idea. Its digital subscriptions are ahead of target and, like the Ashburton Guardian, many subscribers are Kiwis living abroad.

"We have got subscribers in Australia, Thailand, America," says editor Mark Longley.

But, he says what works for them might not work for the bigger websites.

"It would take a lot of guts for a national or a global website to go behind a pay wall. We are lucky because if you want to read about Eastern Bay news you have pretty much got to go to the Beacon," he says.

3 News and TVNZ say they are not looking at adopting a pay wall. However, Stuff and The New Zealand Herald are.

The NZ Herald told 3 News it might go with a metered pay wall like The New York Times, where readers are allowed a fixed number of articles before they have to start paying.

"If one major newspaper website charged and the other one remained free, well, that would be a tough call," says Mr Longley.

"If you have got some unique content that people want to pay for they will pay," says Mr Lammers. "If you have got content that overlaps or is very similar to other websites it's pretty hard."

Both editors say that once you've given something away for free it is very hard to convince people to pay for it.

3 News

source: newshub archive