USA Today is getting a paywall. Who’s the audience for it? » Nieman Journalism Lab
It was all the way back in 1996 — Whitewater! Bob Dole! a new cable channel called Fox News! — when The Wall Street Journal put up its first online paywall. It was a lonely bet at the time, with most newspapers still offering their news online for free. But as a business newspaper, the Journal was about as well-positioned as a paper could be to get readers (or, more likely, their employers) ponying up.
It was 15 years (and one false start) later when The New York Times followed suit with its own paywall. As a general-interest paper, the Times’ decision was not considered a slam dunk; there was still a ton of free competition online. But the Times is the Times, and its pitch that you pay for quality has worked magnificently in the decade since.
It was 2013 when The Washington Post launched its paywall. The Post had its own set of questions, with a still-dominant print position in the D.C. area, a huge audience in government, and what had historically been a less national outlook than the Times. But it worked out too — though it’s a question for alternate-universe theorists how it would have done if Jeff Bezos hadn’t bought the place two months later.
