Pay-Walls Here For Good of Journalism

It is no secret that newspaper and magazines are being hit with a double hammer blow of falling audiences and dwindling advertising revenue. Throw a recession into the mix and you can really see why the industry is struggling.

However, the reality is that circulations have been declining for more than a decade. This trend was due more with the way people were gathering their news… via TV, the internet, their mobile… rather than volatile economic markets.

If anything, the media industry has been slow to react to the changing markets and giving away free content on the web, in hindsight, may have been the smartest move?

Now newspapers are looking for new revenue streams and pay-walls not only do this but also protect the paper’s number one asset – its premium content.

Pay-walls are not going to be an overnight success story – it took the Wall Street Journal years to build up its online subscription base.

But Sir Martin Sorrell argues, pay-walls are essential to the future of journalism. Like others, he says that “giving away content for free if consumers value it makes no sense”.

You can’t argue with that logic.