A regional publisher is considering putting up paywalls on some of its newspapers’ websites, it is understood.
The idea is one of a number of options under discussion as a result of concerns about advertising revenues at JPIMedia.
HTFP understands that “nothing has been finalised” in terms of the idea, and the company has declined to reveal which regions or titles may see a paywall being introduced.
In May last year the Yorkshire Post, then owned by JPI predecessor Johnston Press, introduced online registration for readers in a move designed to prevent the use of ad-blocking software.
In an open letter to readers, editor James Mitchinson justified the move on the grounds that the paper’s “high quality journalism” needed to be paid for.
At the time, he added the Leeds-based Post was “exploring other business models” for the long term, but declined to go further.
A JPI spokesman said: “Like most publishers across the UK and beyond, JPIMedia is continually assessing opportunities to better monetise its online content to build a more sustainable future for its titles.
“Meanwhile, we are also investing in re-platforming our websites and apps in order to significantly improve our reader’s user experience.”
Richard Neville, editor of Aberdeen-based daily The Press & Journal announced plans to implement what he termed a “harder paywall” for readers of the paper’s website, instead of a metered paywall, which sees readers get access to a certain number of free articles each month before being told to choose from a variety of subscription packages.
And earlier this month, Cornwall Reports founder Graham Smith announced the introduction of a new pay-as-you-go system for readers of his site, having had a paywall since just after its launch in 2016.
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This smacks of desperation as it was trialled on some JP titles with a singular lack of success some years ago and quietly dropped.
Aren’t management supposed to be abuzz with their own, fresh innovative ideas?
Instead of which, they live in their own bubble and complain about BBC websites providing content for ‘free’ when it is nothing of the sort as we pay for it via the licence fee.
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The only successful paywall is The Times, which is very high quality, unlike the content of any JPI paper and website. Plus the JPI website template used on every website is terrible. Imagine how successful local papers would be today if they never bothered with the internet.
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Anyone who has seen a JPI website would just laugh at this idea. Enough said. They cannot sell enough papers and not enough advertisers like their clunky webs? What’s the future?
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I totally agree with the comments about the JPi newspaper websites. They all use the same format with adverts intruding in such a way as to make it impossible or at best hard work to follow a story to such an extent that you don’t bother.
I stumbled across a west country newspaper site the other day that I don’t think was in the JPi stable and that was the same – awful.
Until they make their sites readable then trying to get readers to part with their cash is a waste of time.
A better idea might be to give readers the option to pay for ‘ad free’ versions?
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With many regional publishers patting themselves on the back for increasing traffic to their online free to view news sites yet keeping quiet about the collapse of their paid for newspaper titles, it wil be interesting to see how many of the Online readers are prepared to pay to access the content once placed behind a paywall,my view is very few meaning the site visitors will diminish leaving publishers with two declining platforms and nowhere else to go for revenue.
With content so ooor, how many of the bigger groups wil be brave enough to charge?
Time will tell
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Some of the commentators clearly haven’t run their own businesss. Give it away for free and you go under.
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businesses
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Concerns about advertising revenue? Didn’t JPI Media consider what they were buying into? I’m afraid their websites, starved of professional journalism and too troublesome to navigate, have nothing to sell. People won’t pay for bits of tit-tat when information is readily available elsewhere. JPI Media now realise all those clicks aren’t going to pay the bills and the continuing collapse of print revenue won’t be subsidising the websites for much longer. Unfortunaty, nobody has the answer to the problem. Industries change with the times and it doesn’t bode well for the future.
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Yes @PaulH They can only give it away for free if the commercial people can monetise the increased free to view web traffic, however as they appear unable to do so the idea of a paywall plus the belief that thousands of people getting the content for free equates to a ready made market for implementing a paywall, to them, is the obvious answer.
The trouble with believing your own sense of self importance based on giving your content away for free,can spell disaster, if once you put a paywall up and the visitor numbers fall, they’ll lose what few advertisers they have then they’ll be left with nothing.
Let’s see how many publishers, crowing about increses in site visitor numbers,put their money where their mouths are and charge….
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Oh dear,now come on JPi, you just cannot be serious.Paywall? more like a brickwall if you were to do any meaningful research. If your’e serious about local, regional and national newspapers you need to understand what made them successful in the first place. It’s called advertising and it’s what keeps magazines who bother to employ sales people to sell it alive. You stripped out field sales to the bare bone, closed your high street front offices and wondered why the business collapsed. WAKE UP! when you shut a shop nobody can get in even if they want to. It’s now common knowledge that you reported that classified BMD’s were down again. No, they are not, folk are still being born, marrying and dying and businesses still need proper advertising. It’s just that you have shut up the local shop and now expect advertisers to hunt down a call centre.
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agreed Paul Holden. Well said. Free websites are the death of printed papers and the sales stats speak for themselves.
But you cannot get away with charging for very poor quality news on lousy websites either. What next then? JPI execs have obviously not looked looked at their own webs. (to be fair they are only marginally worse than most other local webs).
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Putting a price on something you think is good value is meaningless if the end user disagrees. It’s no surprise the titles showing big increases in free to view web traffic are also the ones who’s newspaper copy sale has collapsed, the North Norfolk News and Norwich Evening Morning News being two prime examples.
So makes the publisher think that people will pay to read content on line they aren’t prepared to pay for in print? Of course if it’s free they’ll take it,many will no longer pay for the paper version if they’re getting it free online, once you put a price on it they, in all likelihood,won’t pay unless it’s of superior quality, unique content and wholly relevant to the locality and we all know they’re a million miles away from there right now.
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@Paul Holden
I don’t think anyone is saying you should give your content away for free, rather that implementing a paywall for local news simply wouldn’t work.
Do you honestly think many people will pay to access a local papers content once it’s put behind a paywall?
No one would argue that giving your product away for free makes any sense unless you use the free newspaper model where giving it free to a huge number of people will attract paying advertisers looking to reach that particular market.
The big difference is that whilst free to access web traffic is growing, the advertising teams are still unable to monetise it.
Digital revenue is minimal to say the least, certainly not enough to fund large scale publishing operations, and with regional newspaper sales in terminal decline and a pittance coming from online platforms it’s hard to see what sustainable revenue streams are left for the bigger regional groups.
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Frankly, JPI same sh.. same dogs.
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It pains me to say it, but at the advent of online regional newspaper pages virtually all journalists of my acquaintance agreed that it was madness to give away the news while still asking punters to buy the print version. Obviously no one listened because the web was the next big thing and would be monetised through increased advertising and would counteract the dwindling hard copy sales. Yeah, right!!!
It has been a slow and painful decline to the present position where newspaper groups, having ripped the heart and soul out of editorial teams, are left with poor quality products that no one in their right minds would consider shelling out hard cash to read on screen. And with few people buying the print copies the future seems bleak. An interesting stat would be the sales figures of our major regional titles, 10, 20, 30 and 40 years ago. I suspect most will be 90% down on their heyday.
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All Seeing Eye.
I know for certain one regional daily selling about 115,000 just over 30 years ago now has sales of about 8,000, but I won’t name it as the poor devils trying to keep it afloat are not to blame.
Thousands of experienced journos on local papers warned management not to strip staff and offices in the chase for the digital rainbow that proved an illusion. They were called doom mongers and laughed at, often on HTFP. No-one is laughing now, sadly.
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