We’ve been writing a lot about The Guardian recently on The Wall pondering whether it will eventually have to put up a paywall, looking at its grab for US traffic and wondering if it might be planning to ditch print for a digital future sooner rather than later.

Today, it has two pieces of research it is highlighting. The first, quoting the latest figures from digital analyst comScore, reveal that its website is the third most popular newspaper website in the world.

Considering the competition that is something of an achievement for, as editor Alan Rusbridger puts it, “a little newspaper from London”.

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Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail is to follow The New York Times and others and begin charging its readers for content. The paper is to implement a metered paywall system although it has yet to announce how much it will charge or how many articles it will give readers for free.

It said the it was moving its plans forward for the paywall in response “to an unpredictable advertising market”, which that has seen both print and digital sales drop this spring at publishers in both North America and Europe. Read More »

The Twittersphere lit up last night as it was reported that Sky News was introducing a new social media policy that bans its journalists from retweeting non-Sky sources. Essentially the broadcaster that has done so much to establish its reputation in social news is taking an anti-social media approach.

Staff were informed of the new social media policy in an email that told staff not to “re-tweet information posted by other journalists or people on Twitter”. Read More »

I’ve written a number of blog posts about how, in my opinion, The Times is missing a trick by making its paywall impermeable to social media or put another way how it is anti-social media.

I’ve written how its anti-social media paywall model was rejected by other parts of News Corp and how the Times and The New York Times compare (social media Vs anti-social media).

However, it has emerged that the News International-owned Times maybe about to change that policy and allow a little social media light in and its readers to share some articles. Read More »

I wrote earlier this year that News International was rethinking its anti-social media paywall policy with regards whether it would introduce a paywall for the Sun modelled on the one employed by The Times.

It had intially been reported that The Sun would follow in the footsteps of the News of the World, which saw its traffic plummet after its paywall went live, but that turned out to be the least of its problems. Read More »

News International has put out some updated figures detailing how The Times and The Sunday Times paywalls are performing.

Back in March we reported that News International was claiming 79,000 digital subscribers. That figure has risen to just over 100,000 in time for its first birthday. It is a nice round number. Read More »

Interesting report on Journalism UK about News International possibly rethinking its closed, anti-social media or iron curtain, approach to its paywall. The Sun had been due to follow same paywall model employed by The Times and the News of the World.

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know I think this is the equivalent to shooting yourself in the foot. I mean, seriously, why do it? Why have a paywall that cuts you off from the social media conversation? Read More »

I’ve said a bunch of times that metered paywalls can work and that this will be the case with the delayed one at the New York Times, which is set to finally launch  shortly.

Others have said it will be a success too and research has shown that where metered type paywalls have gone up they have had little effect on newspaper web traffic, but it is always nice to have more evidence such as the Augusta Chronicle. It put up a metered paywall and not only did it work, but it boosted traffic. Read More »

News Corporation might recently have delayed The Sun’s move to paid content, in light of the disappointment with the The Times, but that is not stopping the Telegraph Media Group pushing ahead with plans to introduced a metered paywall for Telegraph.co.uk.

Marketing reports today that the Daily Telegraph website is to a unveil paid-for website in September and that it will be a metered model, which unlike The Times and its anti-social media paywall will allow articles to be freely shared online. Smart move. Read More »

Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the News Corporation’s policy on new media: one minute, it’s great, they buy MySpace. Then they put up paywalls, hide their blogs and eschew social media. Then they launch a pioneering iPad newspaper. Confusing.

This month, anyway, it seems that new media is in. Not only with the launch of The Daily, but also with this pretty clever campaign, Word Nerd, to encourage people to follow their official Twitter feeds, their journalists’ Twitter feeds and, of course, take out a subscription.

Word Nerd: subtly letting you know I got a high score

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