The Times has given an update on digital subscription numbers and says  The Times and Sunday Times now have 131,000 digital subscribers across all platforms.

That is an improvement on figures it gave in February when News International said its two UK newspaper websites behind paywalls had 119,255 digital subscribers for The Times and 113,818 for the Sunday Times. Read More »

News International’s experiment with a non-penetrable paywall around websites for The Times and Sunday Times has been a failure, while the rise of Mail Online has been the “world success story”, according to former Guardian leader, Tim Brooks. Read More »

A reminder from the New York Times for those who are banking their future on online advertising: revenues can go down as well as up. The media group reported digital ad revenue declined 10.3% across the company and slipped 2.3% at the division housing The New York Times and the Boston Globe.

Paid subscriptions, however, continue to rise. Paid subscribers to digital subscription packages, e-readers and replica editions of The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune hit approximately 454,000 as of March 18. Read More »

Copyright violations are the bane of entertainment executives lives. If you stop and listen you might just be able to hear the anguished screams of entertainment corporations, floating through the sky from Hollywood. Conversely, in the UK news industry such copyright infringements are unheard of. Why is this?* Read More »

We read last week how the New York Times was planning to essentially raised its paywall and cut the number of free articles it gives away in half after reporting impressive digital subscriber numbers.

That hasn’t stopped some from stooping to desperate measures in an effort to try and get hold of a copy of the paper with one man trying to scale the building. Read More »

The New York Times plans to cut the number of free articles it gives away to readers online from 20 to 10, but crucially the site will still remain open to social media when it comes to sharing.

At its upper limit 20 free articles was, perhaps, too generous a number and possibly discouraged people from subscribing although the latest numbers it has released suggest otherwise. Read More »

The Los Angeles Times is to become the latest major online newspaper to put up a paywall. It announced its plans at the weekend and says it will begin charging from next week.

Like the unrelated New York Times, the LA Times has opted for a social media friendly metered paywall and plans to charge an initial rate of 99 cents a month before rising after a four week trial. Read More »

Interesting move by The Sunday Times today. It reacted to the outpouring of tweets following the death of war correspondent Marie Colvin in Syria by putting her final report for the paper outside of its paywall.

There was a mass of tweets this morning as the tragic news broke of the death of the long time and highly respected Times journalist who was killed in the besieged city of Homs along with photographer Remi Ochlik after a shell hit the house they were sheltering in. 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 »

UPDATE: News International has finally confirmed that the paid for archive website for The Sun, which appeared online earlier this week, is not part of an effort to charge UK consumers for historic content from The Sun and News of the World.

I blogged on Tuesday that this could be the case as on the surface that is what it looked like. However, while the site is still there, it is said to be connected to News Corporation’s Australian arm and syndication efforts, including The Australian which launched a metered paywall in October. So no tabloid paywall for the UK any time soon, at least as far as News International is concerned. Read More »