Readers who need their daily dose of the Los Angeles Daily News will soon have to pay up. That goes for frequent readers of the Long Beach Press-Telegram, the Pasadena Star News and six other local Southern California papers owned by Digital First Media. The company said the newspapers will transition to paid subscriptions starting Wednesday.
The transition comes at a time when newspapers are struggling to increase revenues and many have gone the route of putting up paywalls on their websites. Almost half of newspapers in the U.S. now have paywalls, which according to Businessweek helped to raise circulation revenue by 5% last year.
Have paywalls become a necessity for the survival of newspapers? If you’re a reader of one of these papers, do you see yourself paying for a subscription?
Guest:
Ken Doctor, media analyst for newsonomics.com and the author of “Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get” (St Martin Press, 2010)