Newsday, San Francisco Chronicle To Start Charging For Online Content

Browsing the Web sites of two major daily newspapers is about to start costing: After posting substantial losses, both Newsday and the San Francisco Chronicle have announced plans to begin charging readers for online content.

As revenues continue their precipitous decline, we can expect more newpapers to consider adopting online pay models. Back in October, the Christian Science Monitor announced it would shift to a "Web-based strategy" that includes charging subscription fees for a daily PDF edition. Other outlets charging for online content have yielded mixed results: The LA Times began charging for online access to its "Calendar" arts section in 2003, but eliminated the pay wall in 2005 after seeing a sharp drop in traffic to its Web site. Around that time, the New York Times tried putting its opinion columnists behind a pay wall with the 2005 implementation of its "TimesSelect" program, but scrapped the subscription program two years later, saying "projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising."...more