"Economist" set to charge for its Internet edition

THE Economist will tomorrow become the first British mainstream publication to go against the culture of the Internet and charge for online access to its articles.

The news weekly, which will continue to make about eight articles from each edition freely available on the Internet, will give access to its entire content for an annual rate of £29 sterling.

The online service, which includes a searchable archive of back issues dating from 1995 and classified advertising, is initially available without charge to subscribers to the print edition of the Economist.

The response of the Economist's 40,000 regular online readers, many of which the news magazine hopes will switch to the subscription service, will be carefully watched by other British publishers.

Subscription revenues are important if online publishers are to reduce their reliance on advertising and to cover the costs of the electronic editions most have set up since the internet took off in 1993.

"We don't give the Economist away in print, so I don't see why we should give it away on the web," said Mr Anthony Gottlieb, executive editor.

"The internet can only benefit from collecting, money rather than losing money.

Mr Gottlieb dismissed fears that the online edition would cannibalise sales of the print version.

"If people are going to switch from print to onscreen, you have to make sure you are on screen for people to switch to," he said.

The move by the Economist comes in spite of mixed experience in the US, where some publications have sought to charge from the earliest feasible point and others have preferred to build readership before, doing so.

The most successful subscription site, apart from offerings from magazines such as Playboy, is the Wall Street Journal's interactive edition, for which it charges $49 (£32) a year which has a readership of 100,000 and a discount for print customers.

However, the New York Times and Slate, the magazine set up by software giant Microsoft, both abandoned plans to charge subscriptions in the interest of building up readership and advertising revenues.