Websites start charging for news

About Technology –

Johnston says the introduction of “paywalls” is a trial

One of the UK’s biggest newspaper firms is to charge for access to online content from six of its titles.

The Johnston Press websites will either ask users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription to read the full articles, or direct them to buy the newspapers.

Johnston is the first regional publisher in the UK to trial asking readers to pay for its online news.

Sites in the pilot scheme include the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley & Heanor News and the Whitby Gazette.

The Northumberland Gazette is also included in the trial. In Scotland, the Carrick Gazette and Southern Reporter are taking part.

Payment models

The Scotsman, also published by Johnston, operates a similar system for readers wishing to view "premium content" on its site.

Johnston, which owns more than 300 papers across Britain and has suffered from a drop in advertising revenues, says the introduction of "paywalls" is an experiment to assess the impact of charging for content.

"Once you start restricting access on the websites, if you have content that can broadly be found somewhere else, then you really restrict the number of people coming to websites," the Guardian’s director of digital content Emily Bell told the BBC.

"I think it’s great that people are experimenting with lots of different models because undoubtedly we need to find more money in the market," she added.

The Financial Times charges a subscription for full access to its web content.

Earlier this month, News Corp chief Rupert Murdoch said he would try to block Google from using news content from his companies.

Mr Murdoch has previously said that the websites of his news organisations would begin charging for access.