And the paywalls just keep rising
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

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Perhaps emboldened by news that the NYTimes is making a go of it with its paywall model, ending Q2 2011 with more than a million digital subscriptions, the rising tide of newspaper online paywall access has just swept up a new player: MediaNews Group, which operates small and medium sized newspapers in 11 US states including California, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Massachusetts and Vermont.

paidContent.org reported  that the company will start charging readers for online access to content from 23 of its newspapers starting today, even if they are paid print subscribers.  Readers will be able to access five pages of content per month before being charge $1.99 per month for full access; subscribers pay a slightly lower fee.

Interestingly, the larger papers in the MNG family serving major metropolitan areas, like Denver Post and Salt Lake City Tribune, are not the ones having paywalls enacted. Rather, it's smaller papers serving local audiences (The Ukiah Daily Journal in California, the Alamogordo Daily News in New Mexico, etc) that are the ones where readers and subscribers alike must now pay to read any news that isn't the classifieds, obituaries or announcements.

The generous observer would say that erecting paywalls for smaller circ papers points to the premium people are willing to pay for hyper-local content. The more cynical view is that without competition to provide a centralised news source for smaller communities, publishers can get away with charging more there.

Which bodes well for American news satire site TheOnion.com, which Mashable.com reports is testing its own paywall, this one targeting international visitors who read more than five articles a month. Because you can get real news anywhere. But only The Onion has hard hitting news pieces like "New GOP Strategy Involves Reelecting Obama, Making His Life Even More Miserable".

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