Newspapers start charging for online news service

Johnston Press – one of the UK’s biggest newspaper businesses – has started to charge people to access the online content at six of its publications. It is asking users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription or direct users to buy the newspapers. It is the first regional newspaper to trial asking readers to pay for the news. The Financial Times has already been charging for access to its online content for a while, and Newscorp – which owns The Times and The Sun – has announced that it is going to follow the FT’s lead. These developments come as the publishing industry tries to get to grips with pressures on its revenues from reduced sales of paid for newspapers and users’ assumptions that they can get news for free online.

Meanwhile, Google has announced that newspaper publishers can now set a limit on the number of free news articles that people can read through Google. Google has made the concession following claims from some in the media industry that Google has been profiting from free online news pages. Under the First Click Free programme, publishers can prevent unrestricted access to subscription sites. If a user clicks on more than five articles within a certain time period, they would be taken to the publisher’s payment or registration pages.