News International closes Times Online

by @gordonmacmillan, posted on 15 June, 2010 at 3:31 pm, filed under Digital media, paid content, Paywall and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.

It’s so long to the Times Online. The website has this afternoon officially closed ahead of the launch of News International’s two new paid for Times websites.

Thetimes.co.uk and Thesundaytimes.co.uk now live the only way to access the site’s at the moment is as a registered user before the paywall kicks in later this month.

The death of Times Online and of free content at The Times has come on a hugely busy paid content for News Corporation with the announcement I wrote about this morning of its acquisition of Skiff and investment in Journalism Online.

In all of this you can see Rupert Murdoch’s steely determination to lead the paid content charge. He will not be deterred. He is a paid content believer. Much like Rob Grimshaw, managing director of FT.com, who speaking at Media 360 last week said there was a strong opportunity on the internet to do business by selling their content.

“We think if publishers make the leap and embrace paid content there is a way forward,” Grimshaw said.

Whatever happens with The Times it is going to be very interesting. While I have no intention to pay personally I can see people doing it. Whether there will be enough is another question.