Media organisations are looking for best way to fund good journalism

The word paywall is banned in Rupert Murdoch’s UK headquarters. When he decided that all his newspapers across the world would charge people for access to their websites, his British executives joked about fining staff who used the P-word.

What is not a joke, however, is Murdoch’s passionate belief that giving away his journalists’ content free is unacceptable. As a profit-seeking businessman, it offends his commercial credo not to be paid.

His attitude is shared by many so-called “old media” owners and managers. But in sealing off content unless people pay for it they are accused by digital missionaries of trying to erect an outdated business model on a new, more open, and supposedly more democratic, form of communication.

Worse, in their eyes, is the fact that paywalls offend the information-wants-to-be-free philosophy of Silicon Valley technologists and the millions who browse the net daily.

Many media owners, who are desperately fighting for survival in the face of digital disruption, scoff at such a philosophy, with some arguing that it harks back to the days of hippydom. For them, the paywall debate does not represent a fundamental split between old and new media, as digital revolutionaries tend to believe. It is, instead, a practical matter.

Informed analysis

They do not see their desire to extract profit from the labours of their journalistic staffs as anything other than a sensible way to preserve professional journalism. No profit means no money to fund news-gathering and informed analysis, and its loss would be a genuine threat to democracy.

There is a secondary debate, just as intense, among traditional newspaper owners. Some believe building vast online audiences who can visit their websites free will attract advertisers. In the UK, they include politically polar papers such as the Guardian and the Daily Mail.

Both point to their increasing millions of users, and growing advertising revenue, as proof of the good sense of their approach. Eventually, although they concede that digital pennies will never replace print pounds, there will be enough income to maintain their journalistic output come the inevitable day when newsprint publishing dies, whether for lack of audience or because it becomes too costly.

By contrast, the Financial Times and Murdoch's three papers – The Times, Sunday Times and Sun – believe it is more commercially advantageous in the long run to have combined revenue from both advertising and user subscriptions.

In company with the two leading US newspapers, the New York Times and Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, they have erected paywalls, demanding people pay upfront to read their website content. They also cross-promote seeking to stimulate interest in their newsprint versions too.

Publishers using paywalls contend that although the volumes are far, far less than those for free websites, the people who are prepared to fork out for subscriptions are a more valuable audience for advertisers because they tend to be more affluent and engaged.

It is fair to say that the American pair, plus the FT, have surprised the digital purists by enjoying some success with their paywalls. The Wall Street Journal now has more than 900,000 digital subscribers; the NY Times reported that by the end of September 2014 it had 875,000 "digital-only" subscribers; and the FT now has 476,000 subscribers.

Strategy

To add a further complication to this story, the publishers who have embraced the charging-for-access strategy have used different tactics. The

Wall Street Journal

, as with all Murdoch’s titles, has a “hard” paywall, meaning that nothing is available unless one pays the subscription.

The FT pioneered the "soft" paywall, now known as the metered model, in which readers are allowed to click on to a certain number of articles a month before being required to subscribe. The New York Times battened on to that model too, which most American and Canadian papers have also introduced in the past year or so.

Some 10 years ago, charging people to read a newspaper website may not have worked. But two very different factors have since come into play. Firstly, digital commerce has become so common that people hardly think about it. Secondly, newspapers have improved their online products, adding better quality video clips, data journalism and club memberships that provide special offers to events.

Listening in to discussions about the efficacy of paywalls between publishers and editors, it is obvious, despite the propaganda on either side of the divide, that none are absolutely convinced what will happen in future.

That, of course, is the nature of revolutions. They force change to occur without anyone being sure of the outcome. Publishers facing a seemingly inexorable move online by their readers have been compelled to experiment.

They, like their editors, are unconvinced that disparate blogs and the widespread use of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, will replace journalism.

Paywalls, if they work as their advocates believe, could be the key to preserving the kind of journalism they believe essential to enhance democracy and, of course, to keep them in business.

Roy Greenslade is professor of journalism, City University London, and writes for the Guardian