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Original Article

Media, Culture & Society

Behind the newspaper paywall

2015, Vol. 37(7) 1022­–1041
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0163443715591669
content: a comparative analysis mcs.sagepub.com

of why Australian newspapers

are stuck in the purgatorial
space between digital and print

Andrea Carson
University of Melbourne, Australia

Abstract
This article examines one response to the financial ‘crisis’ of print newspapers addressing
the rise of digital paywall systems to monetise journalism. It analyses selected daily
mastheads’ paywalls in the United States, Britain and Australia, comparing the type,
pricing and audience uptake. This article reviews scholarly and industry literature to
identify international newspaper paywall trends and considers these in the Australian
context. The article finds paywalls are becoming the norm, with metered paywalls
favoured over hard paywalls; paywall prices are increasing, after initial reductions, to
offset digital subscriptions cannibalising print subscription revenues. As audiences and
advertising migrate from print to our screens, a broader view is required. The argument
here is that, in the short term, revenues generated from Australian digital subscriptions
and digital advertising alone cannot sustain newsrooms, but the cost of print together
with falling hardcopy circulations suggest digital paywalls must not be overlooked. In
the immediate, Australia’s major newspapers are stuck in a purgatorial space between
paywalls and print.

Keywords
Australian newspapers, digital advertising, digital revenue, digital subscription, global
reach, journalism crisis, newspaper crisis, newspaper paywalls, online news, quality
journalism

Corresponding author:
Andrea Carson, University of Melbourne, John Medley Building, Grattan St, Parkville, Melbourne, VIC 3010,
Australia.
Email: carsona@unimelb.edu.au

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Carson 1023

Introduction
A large body of research and news reports highlight the funding ‘crisis’ for print news-
papers in developed economies (Collins, 2011; Macnamara, 2010; Picard, 2014). Collins
(2011) identifies that in the 21st century, accessing online content is a ubiquitous part of
daily life. The Internet has become the first place people look for information. Online
content both adds to, and substitutes, traditional media use, and has irreplaceably altered
our patterns of communication.
A more complex picture emerges when the question turns to, ‘From where primarily
do people in developed states get news?’ In 2014, the Pew Research Center found that
more Americans access news via the Internet than traditional media, whereas European
surveys have found people use a mix of traditional and digital media to follow the news
(Newman and Levy, 2014). Other studies show online news is mostly accessed from
digital iterations of newspapers (Nielsen, 2012: 38; Ofcom, 2012).
These findings suggest newspapers remain among favourite news brands in the digital
age. Australian research finds the news audience trusts elite mastheads over other media
(Media Entertainment Arts Alliance (MEAA), 2008).
The Internet has expanded the audience for traditional media’s provision of the news,
but it has also displaced legacy media’s revenues – advertising and subscription sales –
that for centuries, in some cases, have subsidised journalism. The Internet’s substitution
effect has proved fatal for hundreds of newspapers in many developed states (Schulhofer-
Wohl and Garrido, 2009: 1). In the past two decades, 11% of daily US newspapers have
closed (Picard, 2010: 79). Also, the competition between newspapers has narrowed. In the
last century, 689 US cities had competing daily paid newspapers, this has concentrated to
under a dozen (Schulhofer-Wohl and Garrido, 2009: 1). In Australia, only Melbourne and
Sydney have competing daily print mastheads. Australia’s two major print proprietors,
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp Australia (NCA) and Fairfax Media, account for about
90% of daily metropolitan circulation (Tiffen, 2010: 87). Media baron Rupert Murdoch
has made no secret he desires one-newspaper towns in Australia (Guthrie, 2010: 12).
Other factors including cultural, political and economic have contributed to the steady
decline of print newspapers’ profitability and institutional power in the West but none as
striking as the technological disruption and redistributions of content and advertising
revenues engendered by the Internet (Nielsen, 2012; Picard, 2011; Tiffen, 2010).
Loss of print pluralism and the substitution effects of the Internet raise important
questions for scholars and media professionals about newspapers’ future, and impor-
tantly, the quality of their journalism. Newspapers are large producers of journalism and
the single largest employers of journalists (Tiffen, 2010: 94). Their future is of particular
interest because of their ‘ideal’ role mediating the Habermasian public sphere, informing
the public and their capacity to strengthen democratic accountability by holding those
with power to account (McNair, 2006).
Tiffen (2010) finds that, ‘at the beginning of the twenty-first century, by any criterion
the press has a far less central role among the mass media, and by all the most tangible
measures [Australian] newspapers are in relative and, increasingly, in absolute decline’
(p. 82). Figures show that Australian mastheads’ print circulations had not kept pace with
population growth, and the number of daily newspapers sold per 1000 population almost
halved between 1980 and 2007 (Simons, 2007: 29).

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1024 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

Print Newspaper decline during GFC (%)

Australia

UK

USA

-40 -30 -20 -10 0

Change in newspaper publishing market 2007-2009 (%)

Figure 1. Print newspaper market decline: 2007–2009.

Source: Author analysing OECD 2010.

During the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), print revenues declined significantly in
Europe and the United States (see Figure 1) precipitating hundreds of masthead closures.
Australia’s economy avoided recession, but its print newspapers’ revenues were not
unscathed.

Declining print circulation and advertising revenues

Australia’s print newspaper circulation revenues continued to fall after the GFC, from
AUD1.5 billion in 2009 to AUD1.2 billion in 2014; its advertising revenues also fell from
AUD2.9 billion to AUD2.1 billion in this period (PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC),
2014a). PWC (2014b) predicts that between 2013 and 2018, total print newspaper reve-
nues are expected to recede further in mature markets: 3.2% (compound annual growth
rate) in Australia, 2% in Europe and 4% in North America.
Australia’s print media decline hit a new low in June 2012 when NCA and Fairfax
announced approximately 3000 job cuts collectively (Norrie, 2012). Up to 800 redundancies
were to be editorial positions (Warren in Lloyd, 2012). Other major changes included aban-
doning the centuries-old broadsheet traditions of the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and
the Age; and, despite previously rejecting paywalls, Fairfax’s CEO Greg Hywood (2011)
committed to installing metered paywalls by January 2013. This deadline was extended six
months after the announcement that Britain’s Guardian newspaper, which already had more
than a million Australian online viewers at that time, would start an Australian franchise and
employ local journalists (Sweney, 2013). The postponement suggested Fairfax was uncer-
tain about introducing paywalls, particularly when threatened by a new competitor to add to
the existing competition from ‘free’ government-funded news broadcasters: Australian
Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Special Broadcasting Service (SBS).
At NCA, job loss numbers were undisclosed, but estimated to be in the hundreds (Hall,
2012). The company had already placed its only broadsheet newspaper, the Australian,
behind a hard paywall in 2011; and its best-selling tabloid, the Herald Sun, began charg-
ing online readers via a paywall in 2013. This period marked a shift in newspaper compa-
nies’ thinking resulting in the majority of Australia’s daily mastheads erecting some form

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Carson 1025

Table 1. Australia’s major metropolitan daily newspapers and their paywall models.

Publisher Masthead Paywall Free articles per month

Fairfax Media Financial Review Nil
Sydney Morning Herald 30
Age 30
Canberra Times Unlimited
News Corp Australia Australian Premium content – nil:
basic content – 5 per week

Herald Sun 5

Daily Telegraph 5
Courier Mail 5
Adelaide Advertiser 5

Hobart Mercury Unlimited

NT News Unlimited

Seven West Media West Australian Unlimited

Source: Author.

of paywall (see Table 1). These paywalls were in an experimental phase with initial price
lowering and, in some cases, switching models from hard to soft to stem the significant
decline in website traffic (PWC, 2014a).

‘Soft’ versus ‘hard’ paywalls

Paywall models broadly fall into two categories: ‘soft’ and ‘hard’. Hard paywalls prevent
free access to online news content (beyond the lead story) such as London’s Times and
United States’ Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Soft paywall options allow limited viewing,
without charge, and are designed to keep Internet traffic flowing to a newspaper’s web-
site, important for audience metrics used for attracting advertisers, as well as to entice
readers to pay for greater online access after a free sample.
One soft model is the metered paywall. Readers have access to a number of articles
that can be shared on social media before being required to pay. Australia’s Age and the
SMH are generous metered models, allowing 30 free articles. In comparison, the New
York Times (NYT) offers 10, revised down from 20 in March 2012 (Canadian Business,
2013: 53). Another soft option is the noble model, also called the ‘freemium’ or ‘leaky’
paywall, which provides some free news, but not stories with premium value for which
consumers might be willing to pay. Premium stories are written by a popular columnist,
or belong to a popular section like sport, IT or business. The noble paywall is the model
of choice for the Australian Financial Review (AFR) (headlines only are free), the
Herald Sun and the Australian (see Table 1), after each initially began with a hard
paywall.

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1026 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

Table 2. Australian newspaper sector advertising decline trajectory: 2006–2018.

Australian media & 2006 (%) 2011 (%) 2018 (%)

entertainment sector
Filmed entertainment 65 70 86.5
Free-to-air TV
Subscription TV
Radio
Out-of-home
Magazines
Internet

Newspapers 35 30 13.5

Source: Author analysis of data supplied with permission by Budde (2010: 6); PWC (2014a).

Monetising content: the rise of the paywall

There are no indications that print newspapers’ economic downturn in developed econo-
mies will stabilise without alternative, funding models. Nakashima (2012) estimates more
than a quarter of US daily newspapers now have paywalls to monetise their online content
after it was ‘given away’ for years. The conundrum for print media companies is that most
derive the bulk of their revenues from the print product, through subscription and advertis-
ing. In mature media markets, advertising revenue is falling and digital revenue gains are
not making up for the shortfall. Instead, due to cover price increases and use of paywalls,
circulation as a proportion of overall revenue is increasing and is set to overtake advertising
as the main source of revenue in these markets by 2018 (this has occurred at NYT in 2011–
2012). Generally, circulation revenue is not enough to sustain large newsrooms (Myllylahti,
2014: 12). According to PWC’s (2014b) global newspaper publishing market analysis,

Circulation’s share of total revenue will rise from 47% in 2013 to 49% by 2018, meaning
consumers may soon become publishers’ biggest source of revenue … But despite individual
publishers reporting improved fortunes, few are hailing a transformation – digital circulation
will make up just 8% of total circulation revenue globally by 2018.

Of course, digital circulation’s share is low in global terms, not least, because develop-
ing countries’ print newspaper markets are growing. The point here is that in developed
economies newspapers have traditionally relied on advertising, rather than circulation, to
generate profit. With digital advertising, newspaper companies’ market share is lagging
behind other sectors and this has consequences for their capacity to fund quality journal-
ism. For example, the Australian advertising sector is growing and PWC (2014a) expects
it to reach AUD14.4 billion by 2018, up from AUD12 billion in 2010, but newspapers’
traditional share is being redistributed to other sectors, particularly Internet advertising.
Internet advertising is expected to increase from 9% in 2006 to 39.5% in 2018, which
would make it Australia’s largest advertising sector worth AUD5.7 billion (see Table 2).
In terms of redistribution, a large proportion of global online advertising revenue is

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Carson 1027

directed to companies that do not produce news content, such as Google and Apple, but
aggregate others, causing some to label them ‘frenemies’ of legacy media (Collins, 2011).
This article aims to examine paradigmatic examples of paywall models of major daily
newspapers in Britain, United States and Australia to see what lessons can be extracted and
how they might apply to the Australian context. There is a dearth of scholarship about news-
paper paywalls and their viability as sustainable revenue sources. This article reviews the
academic literature but also industry reports and research because of the identified limited
scholarly research available (Macnamara, 2010; Myllylahti, 2014; Wang, 2009). Reasons
for this are that, until recently, paywalls had not gained momentum in developed states and
therefore little comparative and historical data existed. Also, lag times in research publica-
tions can be at odds with the dynamic economic environment of media organisations mak-
ing it necessary to widen the lens to include news reports and industry perspectives.
To date, much of the scholarship focuses on conditions under which consumers will pay
for content. Iris Chyi, at the frontier of this research in 2002, and later, with Jacie Yang,
used economic theory to argue that online news was equivalent to ‘inferior goods’. In their
words, digital media’s relationship to print was comparable to the relationship between
ramen noodles and steak. When disposable incomes increase, consumers spend it on print
(steak), not online (noodles). Online is an ‘inferior good’ in economic terms because of its
relationship with consumer demand and income (not quality); as income increases, demand
eases. Their conclusion was that people prefer print newspapers to paying for online news
(Chyi and Yang, 2009: 606). Chyi (2012) found consumers’ willingness to pay for online
news weak, concluding paywalls were unlikely to generate sufficient revenues to challenge
the primacy of print newspapers as the main revenue base. These findings are in the context
of the early stages of paywall uptake and iPad access. Online news production has become
more sophisticated, content is more interactive and increasingly custom-designed to max-
imise the features of the digital apparatus used for access. Successive studies have found a
gradual increase in consumers prepared to pay for online news, albeit from a low base,
particularly if it was perceived that a news outlet’s future depended on it (Cook and Attari,
2012 cited in Myllylahti, 2014: 12). A Reuters Institute study of 18,000 people in 10 coun-
tries found the number of people paying for online news was increasing – 11% had pur-
chased news online in the past year, either through a one-off or ongoing subscription
(Newman and Levy, 2014: 12). Other studies identify that paywall uptake is skewed to an
older demographic (Chiou and Tucker, 2013). This seems at odds with the ‘inferior goods’
argument as younger readers often have less disposable income.

So what? Press as a marketplace for ideas

It has been established that the declining newspaper revenues have led to print closures
and cost-cutting in developed nations, and there are varying research findings about con-
sumers’ willingness to pay for online news. While this is an issue for industry stakehold-
ers, is it of broader concern? I argue that it is.
Across theoretical perspectives, the press has been ascribed a normative role facilitating
the exchange of ideas and functioning as a ‘fourth estate’ in democratic society by exposing
transgressions of public trust (McNair, 2006; Schudson, 2003; Schultz, 1998). Famously,
Jürgen Habermas (1989) identified the press, at their pinnacle, as the ‘public sphere’s
preeminent institution’ (p. 181). Benedict Anderson (1983) also identified newspapers for

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1028 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

their role in bringing people together in an ‘imagined community’. Political economic

theorists provide a counter-discourse equating mass media with serving the interests of
elites (Curran and Seaton, 2010; Herman and Chomsky, 1988). The structural economic
change to media companies provides a renewed context for this perspective in democracies
and salience for the question of the mass media’s capacity to produce quality journalism.
Australian journalist and News Corp CEO, Robert Thomson (2005), argued the public
sphere was ‘that ugly room called “the information space”’, which was best occupied by
‘quality’ journalism (p. 5). The question for him was not whether its medium was print
or digital but the quality of its content. While Thomson’s sentiment is appealing, it is
problematic because the issue explored here is whether the paywall is a sustainable fund-
ing model for providing ‘quality’ journalism in ‘the information space’ in the digital age.
Quality journalism is not easy to define since it involves an element of subjectivity. I
adopt Philip Meyer’s (2009: 214) view that evidenced-based journalism earns commu-
nity trust, which in turn, empowers news agencies to demand political accountability of
public institutions and those with power. This type of journalism can then play a role
informing the public sphere and supporting democratic accountability.

Method
The problem concerning newspaper paywall’s viability to fund journalism in the digital
era is critically examined by comparing various outlets’ paywalls to identify: commonly
used models, general features about their content and what factors might influence audi-
ence uptake of digital subscriptions.
I aim to identify key lessons derived from analysing international newspapers’ imple-
mentation of paywalls and how these might inform the use of paywalls to financially
support Australian journalism. There are alternative digital payment options to fund
newspaper journalism, including micropayments, online advertising, philanthropy and
crowd-sourcing, among others. This article focuses on digital paywalls because of their
recent proliferation in Australia and limited working examples of alternative funding
models in Australia (refer to Table 1). Mastheads’ paywalls investigated include:

•• Times (UK)
•• Wall Street Journal (United States)
•• New York Times (United States)
•• Australian Financial Review (Australia)
•• Age (Australia)
•• Australian (Australia)
•• Herald Sun (Australia)

Mastheads without a paywall are also discussed here and include the USA Today and
Britain’s Mail Online and the Guardian. Collectively, the selected mastheads represent
various types of paywalls, audience and reach. They include metropolitan and national
newspapers, some that offer niche news such as financial journalism, and others that
provide general news. Some were early adopters of the paywall, others are relative new-
comers. The NYT and the WSJ have over a million subscribers combined and, as exem-
plars in the paywall environment, afford insights not otherwise available.

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Carson 1029

Data were collected from the surveyed newspapers’ website, scholarly literature and
industry research such as company reports, annual financial statements, investor brief-
ings and speeches; as well as professional associations like the Newspaper Association
of America and the World Association of Newspapers. It includes information from spe-
cialist research institutions like the Oxford University’s Reuters Institute and the US Pew
Research Centre and government and intergovernmental agencies such as the Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Britain’s Ofcom. Business
consulting firms and trade union reports were analysed: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the
Newspaper Data Exchange and Australia’s MEAA among them. Official auditors’ circu-
lation figures were collected, along with media industry surveys such as Nielsen and Roy
Morgan.
I gathered paywall data in 2012 and 2014 to track paywalls’ trajectories and to allow
for cautious comparison within and between news organisations and countries. In order
to make data more comparable between countries, unless otherwise declared, prices refer
to bundled subscriptions that provide print and digital access to subscribers.

Comparative data challenges

This comparative analysis requires careful interpretation of data. Requirements for
reporting digital circulations in each country differ and can change from one year to the
next. Many publishers have introduced branded and unpaid print products that inflate
their circulation figures, which is challenging for establishing trends (Newspaper Data
Exchange, 2014).
American mastheads were permitted to double-count digital access on multiple plat-
forms belonging to a single subscriber (Edmonds, 2013). To address this, the US Alliance
for Audited Media (AAM) created a new rule requiring a metric for total customer
accounts. This enables advertisers to evaluate double-counting under the liberal digital
rules. Some US newspapers report five-day sales averages, others report individual
weekday averages and this is noted before making direct comparisons (AAM, 2014).
Australian publishers were not compelled to report digital subscriptions until July
2013; however, its Audit Bureau of Circulations ‘clarified’ its rules leaving it optional to
publish digital subscription figures. If reported, publishers must provide a breakdown of
figures across digital platforms (mUmBRELLA, 2013). Further, Australian digital audit
figures voluntarily supplied before 1 July 2013 include bundled subscriptions – that is,
the digital subscription packaged with a print subscription. This makes the task of year-
over-year comparisons difficult. Due to the challenges of audit rule changes in each
country, caution is exercised when tracking circulation gains and losses from audit fig-
ures alone.
In Britain, Murdoch’s News UK withdrew its titles from the Audit Bureau of
Circulations’ monthly audit of newspaper web traffic figures in 2010. Alternatively, a
number of digital analysts and methods exist for measuring news websites’ global audi-
ence reach. Some use machine-based measures (WebTrends, Google Analytics) that
track users through cookies or browsers; others use ‘people-based’ technologies that
track ‘unique’ visitors (AAM, 2014). Analysts such as comScore have developed hybrid
technology that purports to remove duplication across multi-platform access to provide

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1030 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

a measure of ‘unique people’ (comScore, 2014). This article uses eBizMBA Rank’s
‘unique visitors’ measure for ease of comparison and relative consistency. This rank
averages Alexa Global Traffic Rank, Compete and Quantcast data.
This article is exploratory in nature and, notwithstanding data comparison challenges,
aims to identify newspaper paywall trends and salient lessons from international practice
that can inform the Australian experience.

Findings and discussion

After critically analysing the literature, scholarly and industry-focused, and assessing
different paywall models in three countries, five key lessons were apparent. No researcher
has compared and contrasted print circulations and paywall models of selected daily
mastheads in Britain, United States and Australia in a single summary, so it is composed
here using 2012 (in brackets) and 2014 data. The two periods enable assessments about
the changing paywall environment (see Table 3).
For example, international papers experienced growth in overall paid circulations,
and paywall subscribers increased for both hard and soft paywalls.
Australian print circulation data shows paid print circulations fell significantly even
when including some bundled subscriptions that are print with digital access attached.
This was particularly true for the tabloid, the Herald Sun. However, like their interna-
tional counterparts, Australian paid digital-only subscriptions are increasing. This high-
lights a conundrum for media companies. Paid print subscriptions earn publishers more
revenue than digital-only sales. Sizeable paywall price increases for Australian and UK
titles over the two years might be an attempt to bridge this shortfall.

Finding the ‘sweet spot’: one size does not fit all
The Murdoch-owned WSJ, a financial masthead, was the first to install a hard paywall in
1997. Thirteen years later, Murdoch’s paywall experiment began in Britain with the
229-year-old Times charging readers to access general news online. A year later,
Murdoch’s Australian general news masthead adopted its hard paywall in 2011. The
Times and the WSJ have remained behind hard paywalls but Murdoch’s Australian news-
papers have not, suggesting population could limit hard paywall success. Murdoch’s
Australian broadsheet converted to a noble paywall after subscriptions stalled at 30,000,
and the Herald Sun tabloid switched briefly to a metered paywall to abate a 20% drop in
online traffic (Hawthorne, 2012).
Unlike the British and American markets, Australia does not have a large population
base to support a hard paywall market for general news, and perhaps even niche, if the
price is too high, particularly when competitors, the ABC and new entrants such as the
Guardian, offer news for free. For example, Australia’s first newspaper to use a hard
paywall was Fairfax’s AFR in 2006 (Simons, 2007: 140). It significantly adjusted pricing
on three occasions – without great subscriber success. Five years later, it abandoned the
hard paywall for a freemium model. While Fairfax does not publicly release AFR digital
subscriptions, AFR CEO Brett Clegg revealed digital subscribers barely exceeded 6000
in 2011 (mUmBRELLA, 2011). Even with price discounting, the AFR is among the

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Carson 1031

Table 3. Comparing paywall models across selected daily international mastheads.

Masthead (2012) Total paid circulation Inaugural Model Total paid Price per month
versus 2014 (digital and hardcopy) year digital sales AUD (2012)
(2012) versus 2014 (2012) versus versus 2014^
2014

New York (1,613,865) 2011 Metered 10 free (896,352* – (37.84)

Times articles a month 390,000 paywall
only)
2,022,850 1,341,945## – 42.12
799,000 paywall
only

Wall Street (2,293,798) 1997 Hard (794,594) (22.33)

Journal
2,294,093 937,801 31.04

Times 508,585 2010 Hard (111,036) (28.29)

537,304 153,000** 65.83

Australian Bundled print sales Digital-only

– all sales includes some digital sales
print +digital + (2012) versus 2014 (2012) versus
e-reader (March 2014
2014)

Age (158,485) 2013 Metered 30 free (N/A) (25.00)

M-F 2014 articles a month

197,027 118,426 78,601 44

Australian (126,901) 2011 Freemium – (31,241) (12.76)

some articles
168,992 111,437 free, others 57,555 54
never

Herald Sun (460,370) (free trial Freemium – (N/A) (17.30)

M-F 2014 382,217 2012) some articles 40,362 54
2013 free, others
never
422,579

Financial (68,425) 2006 Freemium – (N/A – (59.00)

review some articles unconfirmed 75
M-F free, others 14,400)
N/A# 60,706 never
N/A –
unconfirmed
20,000

Sources: Barclays Capital, NYT, WSJ, Times, Australian, Herald Sun, AFR, Newspaper Data Exchange, AAM,
AMAA, ABC (UK).
Notes: *includes International Herald Tribune and Boston Globe later sold; ^allow for currency fluctuations;
**According to News UK CEO Mike Darcey. #AFR digital sales not reported. ## includes e-readers.

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1032 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

world’s most expensive paywalls at AUD16 a week. The company claims to have lifted
subscriptions to 20,000, but this figure includes bundled subscriptions (Fairfax Media,
2012: 15).
In 2011, the NYT reintroduced a paywall after a failed attempt in 2005. Unlike 2005,
it chose a metered, rather than freemium model. In 2012, the NYT halved its free articles
from 20 to 10 to entice readers to pay for greater access. It has had relative success and
other publishers have adopted this model for general news content including Australia’s
Age. The Age’s metered paywall began in July 2013 for $4.95 a week for digital and print
access; this price doubled within a year.
What these examples indicate is that, with the exceptions of the WSJ and the Times,
experimentation is part of implementation. Adjusting paywall prices and models is
necessary to find the best fit for a company’s size, brand, news content and population.
A hard paywall can work for the WSJ because of its niche content. The Times, still
financially reliant on print circulation, might be persevering with a hard paywall
because it is Murdoch’s ideology to do so, or perhaps even to encourage more lucrative
print sales as the Times has ‘selectively raised cover prices [and] subscription pricing’
(Dow Jones, 2014).
Publishers are searching for a ‘sweet spot’ or, what Australian news publisher Alan
Kohler (5 October 2010, Interview with the author, Transcript available on request)
describes, as the balance between ‘maximizing clicks on a story with creating a brand
that has a set of values’. Publishers want readers to pay for journalism but also need to
allow enough website traffic to serve digital advertisers’ needs regarding audience demo-
graphics and volume. For general news providers, the ‘sweet spot’ is often best served by
the metered paywall.

Metered favoured over hard paywalls

An AAM report (2012) found US mastheads chose a metered (40%) over a hard (17%)
or noble paywall (33%). Table 1 shows this was also true for Australian mastheads. Of
the five major British newspaper paywalls (see Table 4), only News UK’s the Sun and the
Times adopted hard paywalls, the others were metered. Reuters Institute found that hard
paywalls curb website traffic flows significantly compared to metered models (Newman
and Levy, 2013: 92). The difference was an 85%–95% reduction in web traffic in the
initial months compared to 5%–15% loss of digital traffic using a metered paywall. A
noble paywall reduced web traffic by about a third (Nakashima, 2012).
Losing digital traffic can be a significant issue for newspapers; that is, unless digital
subscription revenue outstrips advertising revenue. Digital advertisers generally want to
maximise the ‘eyeballs’ viewing their products and therefore desire high volumes, unless
they can target a smaller desirable demographic behind a paywall. This indicates why the
NYT initial paywall might have failed in 2005. It lowered traffic. When the company
dismantled this paywall, the explanation was that more revenue would come from adver-
tising attached to free content (Nakashima, 2012).
In 2014, the NYT’s metered paywall had 799,000 subscribers (NYTCO, 2014), an
11% increase on the year before. Similarly in 2013, it had 708,000 subscribers, a 45%
year-over-year increase (NYTCO, 2013b), yet NYT remains economically vulnerable.

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Carson 1033

Table 4. The % of daily major newspapers with a paywall*.

Mastheads Australia United Kingdom United States

Major paid Age Financial Times Wall Street Journal
newspapers surveyed I Newspaper* USA today
– includes all SMH Guardian
Australian capital city Independent New York Times
daily and national AFR
papers; the UK’s Times LA Times
major paid daily Daily Telegraph Daily Mirror Daily News of New York
national newspapers Daily Star San Jose Mercury News
and America’s top 20 Courier Mail New York Post
biggest paid circulation Adelaide Sun
daily mastheads. Advertiser Daily Express Washington Post
Daily Mail
   Herald Sun Chicago Sun-Times
Daily Telegraph Denver Post
Australian Daily Record
Hobart Mercury Chicago Tribune
West Australian Glasgow Herald
Canberra Times Belfast Telegraph* Dallas Morning News
NT News*
Newsday of Long
Island

Houston Chronicle
Tampa Bay Times
Star-ledger of Newark
Star Tribune of
Minneapolis

Philadelphia Inquirer
Plain Dealer of Cleveland

Orange County Register

% of audited dailies 67% 35% 60%

with paywalls

Sources: Author, AAM 2014, Thepaperboy.com, individual newspaper websites.

Note: *Doesn’t include masthead apps/kindle/ iPad editions. Only includes domestic subscriptions, not overseas.

While its subscriber base has grown, and digital and hardcopy subscriptions have surpassed
advertising revenues, total revenues are still falling, down 1.1% in 2013 compared to
2012 (NYTCO, 2013: 26).

Digital-only subscriptions rising, but … at a cost to print

Newspapers adopting paywalls to monetise digital content after years of providing it for
free is an observable trend across the three countries studied. For an overview of which

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1034 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

mastheads have implemented paywalls, see Table 4. The paywall is a popular business
model for newspapers in the digital era. More than half (11) of the United States’ 20 big-
gest selling daily mastheads have a paywall. The latest to join these was the Washington
Post in 2013, and in 2012 the United States’ largest newspaper chain, Gannett, which
introduced metered paywalls for most of its 80 mastheads but, notably, not for the group’s
best-selling USA Today.
British newspaper publishers are slower to adopt paywalls – about a third of the
nation’s national dailies. Significantly, among Britain’s biggest selling newspapers, the
Sun and the Daily Telegraph introduced paywalls in 2013; doubling the number of British
newspapers using them. Across the three states, 2012 saw more paywalls implemented
than in any other single year. This uptake sharply contradicts Arianna Huffington’s
(2009) view that ‘the paywall is history’.
In 2013, most of Australia’s daily mastheads had a paywall, perhaps beginning a cul-
tural shift for consumer behaviour, realigning expectations that all newspaper content
will be free online. While not early paywall adopters for general news, Table 3 shows
Australian mastheads have had relative success attracting paid digital subscribers over a
short period.
For each of the countries studied, digital subscription is becoming an important aspect
of total circulation (see Table 3). This is particularly true for middle and elite market
mastheads, but less so for tabloid. For the middle and elite audience markets, mastheads’
digital-only subscriptions comprise somewhere within a range of 30%–40% of total cir-
culation – the NYT (39.4%), the WSJ (40.87%), the Times (28.4%), the Australian (34%),
the Age (39.8%) and the AFR (32.9%). This finding was consistent with American
research that found digital subscriptions have ‘become a critical aspect of total circula-
tion – growing to one-third of average daily circulation’ (Newspaper Data Exchange,
2014).
In contrast, digital subscriptions for Australian tabloid the Herald Sun, whose readers
comprise a lower socio-economic demographic, represented a lower proportion of total
circulation, accounting for 9.5% in 2014. This finding conflicts with Chyi and Yang’s
‘inferior goods’ economic theory about paywalls, which would assume that the more
affluent Australian readers would purchase hardcopy rather than online subscriptions.
However, a closer inspection of Australia’s newspaper circulation audit figures shows
that paid print-only sales are being cannibalised by digital sales. For example, while the total
Age sales for Monday to Friday in March 2014 were 197,027, of these a mere 78,996 were
paid print-only sales. When we drill down further, we see that digital packaged subscrip-
tions, plus payments for e-readers and masthead tablet and smart phone apps combined
accounted for 118,031 sales. This is a remarkable 60% of total paid masthead circulation
(Audited Media Association of Australia, 2014, see 14 March audit Age (M–F)).
While this shows that digital subscription uptake has become an important part of
overall circulation, this is problematic for publishers’ overall revenues. Again, taking
the example of the Age, its print cover price is $2.30 a day Monday to Friday or $11.50
for the working weekday ($51 per month) at the time of writing. It is cheaper for read-
ers to buy a bundled digital subscription ($44 per month) or digital-only ($25 per
month) than to purchase print-only.
However, there is a transparency issue here as the Age readers with a print subscrip-
tion of two days or more are permitted digital access. The point is digital subscriptions

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Carson 1035

Unique visitors July 2012 Unique visitors April 2014

50 70
40 60
50
30 40
45 45 70
20 37 30 53
29 31 42 40
20 34
10
10
0 0
Mail The New Wall USA Mail The New Wall USA
Online Guardian York Street Today Online Guardian York Street Today
Times Journal Times Journal

Figure 2. Average number of unique visitors each month in 2012 and 2014.
Sources: (a) WSJ, NYT ,USA Today, UK ABC (b) eBizMBA Rank http://www.ebizmba.com

are currently cheaper and cannibalising traditional print sales, which in turn affects the
attractiveness of print to advertisers.
The more pressing problem for publishers is advertising revenues, as masthead sales
generally comprise a small proportion of total revenue. In 2012, the Newspaper
Association of America found newspapers were reclaiming only $1 of digital advertising
revenue for every $25 of print ad revenue lost. This ratio increased dramatically from 1:7
the year before (Brendish, 2012).

Charging for content does not necessarily limit reach

British newspapers, the Guardian and the Mail Online, and America’s top-selling news-
paper USA Today have resisted placing content behind a paywall.
These free newspapers have an extraordinary number of online readers, see Figure 2
for a comparison between online traffic flows to websites (unique visits), with and with-
out a paywall in 2012 and 2014. Figures may vary between methods used for measuring
digital audience share but these graphs show a similar trend in terms of global reach.
Newspapers without paywalls can enjoy tremendous audience reach, which helps to
attract a greater share of online advertising. But despite their global reach, financial
documents show that these media organisations also experience financial pressure. For
example, the Guardian derives most of its revenues from print media. It made a small
profit in 2013 of AUD60.24 million (£33.2) after suffering a AUD129.92 million loss
(£71.6) in 2012 (MarketLine, 2014b: 3) that triggered AUD40 million in cutbacks
(Bartholomeusz, 2013). To expand its franchise to America and Australia, it sold assets
belonging to its perpetuity fund, the Scott Trust.
Similarly, Mail Online has extraordinary global reach and has successfully grown its
digital advertising revenues to £28m in 6 months to the end of March 2014 (Sweney,
2014). But largely, its parent company, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), is sup-
ported through investment diversification that has diluted its media interests to just 44%.
DMGT’s varied business portfolio shields the company from falling print circulation

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1036 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

revenues, and its global media audience allows it to cross sell its other services such as
Euromoney, events and business information (MarketLine, 2014a: 4).
Importantly, Figure 2 shows there is no simple argument that a paywall will necessar-
ily limit audience reach. The NYT is an example of a large digital audience willing to pay
for content. The type of paywall by itself is also not necessarily a factor in limiting audi-
ence share. The WSJ has a hard paywall, and like the NYT, has significant paid online
audience. What does appear to influence paywall success is the type of news content
provided – whether general or niche – and how compatible the model is for selling that
type of content. Mail Online successfully appeals to the broadest audience possible
through sensational ‘clickbait’ stories about sex, crime and celebrity. Producing quality
journalism is not its mandate. In opposing this type of open model, News UK CEO Mike
Darcey argued that growing free readership was only ‘good for the ego’. He stated, ‘this
reach doesn’t generate any meaningful revenue, and the pursuit of it undermines the
piece of the business that does make money … it is better to sacrifice reach and preserve
sustainable profitability’ (Witkin, 2013). This thinking may work for selling quality jour-
nalism, but for Mail Online maximising, ‘clicks’ is a successful strategy for serving its
diversified business interests.

Premium content is king

Digital subscriber numbers to the WSJ show that specialised journalism can succeed
behind hard paywalls in populated countries. The niche content of the WSJ has had more
subscription success than mastheads with hard paywalls that provide general news
(Times). London’s Financial Times (FT), which provides niche news opted for a metered
paywall (allowing 10 free articles) and experienced greater online circulation than print
in 2012. Its digital subscription is more expensive than some competitors starting at $325
a year demonstrating readers will pay if they think the content is worth it.
These financial publications were early paywall adopters. The FT was the first mast-
head in Britain to introduce a paywall in 2007. The WSJ launched its digital paywall in
1997. This has enabled both mastheads to build comprehensive repositories of data about
their subscribers that can be used to tailor advertising to specific readers (Indvik, 2013).
Furthermore, both offer subscribers a markedly different experience to print through
interactive digital tools such as stock trackers, research reports, calculators and invest-
ment analysis (Newman and Levy, 2013). These value-adding tools arguably contribute
to their paywall successes.
However, Australia’s AFR offers a counter narrative to the success of niche content
behind hard paywalls. It also provides premium business news reporting but initially
struggled to attract digital subscribers. One reason, as identified earlier, is it locked its
journalism behind the world’s most expensive paywall. Another is that Australia’s popu-
lation is small compared to America and Britain. Since lowering its price by a third, and
moving to a freemium model, AFR’s digital subscription, according to company reports,
has increased three-fold.
While niche content is king for success behind a hard paywall, more generally, a core
concern for publishers is that subscription revenue alone does not offset large newsroom
costs. Total masthead revenues can fall even when digital subscriptions rise, as has been

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Carson 1037

the case for the NYT. In 2013, the New York masthead shed staff to further reduce operat-
ing costs (NYTCO, 2013a: 8). These redundancies are unremarkable and represent
newsroom cutbacks across the studied nations.
To limits costs, and to broaden the revenue base, some European and North American
newspapers have outsourced paywall management to Piano Media and Press+ respec-
tively (Canadian Business, 2013). These firms provide paywalls to about 500 publica-
tions across the two continents, significantly cutting set-up costs and assisting publishers
with managing payment infrastructure, subscription and data analytics (Newman and
Levy, 2013). Mastheads can use readership analytics to diversify their revenues by sell-
ing readers targeted products including books, music and concert tickets (Canadian
Business, 2013).
Diversification of revenue is likely to be critical in the future for general newspapers;
especially because there is evidence suggesting newspapers are not advertisers’ first
choice for attracting buyers for their goods and services (Hawkins, 2012: 1). In Australia,
newspapers have lost 5% of the total advertising share in 5 years, yet Australian online
advertising is growing and estimated to be worth $3.75 billion in 2014 (up from $2 bil-
lion in 2010) (Budde, 2010: 4). Publishers are not reaping the benefits of this digital
advertising upswing. The greatest growth in this market is search and directories adver-
tising (51%) followed by online display advertising (33%). Newspapers compete for this
advertising with monoliths like Facebook, Apple and Google (Budde, 2010: 4).
Advertisers often favour these competitors because of their sophisticated data analytics
that specifically target demographics, including location, age, gender, consumers’ brand
preferences and purchase (Ghosh, 2012).

Conclusion
Variable data and a lack of transparency about subscriber numbers make the task of inter-
preting the story about newspaper paid circulations in the digital age a complex one. This
article offers provisional findings about international paywall trends and concludes that
Australian newspapers are in a purgatorial space: they are not earning enough from digi-
tal revenues to abandon print, yet digital subscriptions are cannibalising print subscrip-
tion revenue. Thus, bundled subscriptions are used to soften the impact of digital offerings
eroding print sales and to keep print advertisers on board.
The number of newspaper publishers implementing paywalls to monetise their digital
content is rising. This trend is a significant departure from the earlier convention of
newspapers providing readers online content free of charge. This article finds paywalls
are not necessarily obstacles to building and sustaining large numbers of paid online
subscribers, contingent on the type of content provided – general or niche – its pricing
and population. Metered paywalls are favoured over hard paywalls for funding general
news. Hard paywalls can drive away website traffic unless it has niche content for which
people will pay.
Paywalls have enabled some newspapers to monetise their online content, but cheaper
online subscription rates can cannibalise print circulation revenues as mastheads transi-
tion to digital-first publications. This is particularly a problem for Australian news pub-
lishers operating in a relatively small population. The positive for publishers is that

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1038 Media, Culture & Society 37(7)

readers still turn to traditional news providers in the digital space and, in increasing
numbers, paying for digital subscriptions.
But even ‘successful’ paywalls such as the NYT and the WSJ do not wholly address
total advertising revenue falls, except to respond with newsroom cost-cutting. In the
digital era, paywalls are part of newspapers’ toolkit for bringing in new revenue but there
is no evidence here to suggest they will be a standalone solution. Smaller newsrooms
and/or diversifying revenue streams, by selling targeted products to readership commu-
nities, might be longer term measures. Similarly, financial mastheads’ provision of
exclusive financial data and online interactivity offers paywall subscribers something not
available from the two-dimensional version.
Mastheads that remain without a paywall, such as the Guardian and the Mail Online,
need extensive (global) audience reach to attract sufficient digital advertising. This
model can still fail to deliver revenues necessary to meet operating costs and, in the case
of the Guardian, it would not be financially sustainable online without its Scott Trust.
Digital advertising exists in a highly competitive marketplace where competitors such as
Google, that do not produce costly news content, drive down digital advertising prices.
In this political economic environment for mastheads, digital advertising revenues alone
are insufficient to meet the cost of providing quality journalism.
Herein is the conundrum. While the metered paywall has been found to be best at
managing tensions between reach, revenues and quality journalism, it does not overcome
print’s broken business model and replace past lucrative print advertising revenues that
funded accountability journalism that strengthens democracy. On one side, the prolifera-
tion of paywalls signals a cultural shift for consumer attitudes about paying for journal-
ism online. But counter examples of commercial outlets not charging for news online
suggest the future for paid journalism lies somewhere in the middle; most likely a hybrid
business model based on diversified revenue streams. In the meantime, Australian news-
papers are stuck in the purgatorial space between digital and print.

Acknowledgement
The author would like to thank the journal editors, reviewers and copy editors for their valuable
contribution.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.

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