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 »

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 »

The Sunday Times has launched The Sunday Times Social List. Its the social media version of the Rich List.  The idea being that while most of us are never going to get on the Rich List this is a list you can get on.

It is a really clever idea. Inspired by those industry based Peer Index lists that we all love. It pulls your social activity from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Foursquare and gives you a social ranking.

Oh yes, a small big point. It sits, as it would have to, outside of the Sunday Times paywall. Without that it would stand no chance of working. 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 »

The FT reports that the Telegraph is to be the next major UK publisher to begin charging for its website or at least some of its content.

The plans to charge could be in place as earlier as next year following in the footsteps of rival News International that has The Times, The Sunday Times and The News of the World behind a paywall. Read More »

News International has finally released some numbers for how well its paid content strategy is doing. While encouraging in some areas (apps) the overall number of those who have paid something since July is just 105,000 for The Times and Sunday Times, which includes sales for the iPad and Kindle.

Around half of that 105,000 figure are monthly subscribers, but what they subscribe to is not broken out, with the rest buying daily or weekly passes. Read More »

UPDATE – Figures out today from Nielsen are estimating that The Times has 362,000 unique users behind its paywall each month. There is no way to tell how accurate these figures are although Nielsen says it is confident of the number.

The metrics firm also says that rather than a 90% + fall in traffic at The Times and Sunday Times websites have suffered an 88% drop in UK unique users since News International erected its paywall. Read More »

There’s a piece in the Independent today on The Times paywall that sheds some light on the reaction of advertisers and publicists to goings on at Wapping. With one media agency buyers saying that it is not advertising on the site because of the fall in traffic. Read More »

Dear Rupert Murdoch,

Last week, on 4 August, Brand Republic reported that you ‘gave the first hint’ that subscriber levels to The Times pay wall are ‘strong’. Good on you. But what you have done has really hacked me off. You may not care about this. After all, who am I? Well, I am one of your customers. Read More »

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. Read More »