Week 3: Paywalls

The implementing of paywalls is useful to newspaper companies because it indicates how valued their content is, as audiences who truly want to read their articles will gladly pay for digital or digital and physical subscriptions. Instead of receiving cyclical revenue through advertising space paid for by companies that receive custom from newspaper readers who are encouraged by advertisements in newspapers, newspapers are gradually receiving direct profits from their readers in the form of subscriptions. This indicates a shift in weight of sources of revenue for the news industry.

This is also beneficial for readers as:
- News sites are motivated to increase the quality of their content so target publics are willing to pay for access to articles
- Audiences can distinguish between newspapers with comparatively better content based on the amount of subscribers and the amount of revenue they generate instead of revenue from advertisers

However at the moment, paywalls are not generating maximum potential revenue because they're targeting readers who are loyal to newspapers themselves- businessmen, older generations, and stable households who rely on the paper for their news. Paywalls are not remotely appealing to people with a news reading routine similar to mine: be told of news on social media, follow links on social media to articles that elaborate, and if the news is particularly interesting, we'll read the first three articles that Google provides and accept overlapping information as truth. Our connections on social media represent people with similar situations to ours, for example university students, or topics that interest us, for example anthropology. Therefore any news that pertains to our interest will come to our attention, and our profile on social media will naturally filter out information not immediately important to us- because we care about a particular story, not which company tells it.

How companies can increase appeal of paying for their paywalls (as mindmapped by me):

Link for Guardian Masterclasses about the need to make magazines and journals appealing. This would be beneficial for newspapers as well as we are a literate culture heavily influenced by visual aesthetics.

The Guardian (2014), Guardian News and Media Limited, London, Accessed 12 August 2014
< http://www.theguardian.com/guardian-masterclasses/the-future-of-digital-magazines-peter-houston-publishing-course?INTCMP=mic_233434 >