Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper to move to a metered paywall system
Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, is to begin charging its readers for content through a metered paywall system although it has not yet announced how much it will charge or how many free articles it will give readers.
Media website The Wall reports that the newspaper says it was moving its plans forward for the paywall in response “to an unpredictable advertising market”, which that has seen both print and digital sales drop this spring at publishers in both North America and Europe.
Points out The Wall: ”However, if it is following The New York Times model, or that implemented earlier by the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal, then the limit on the number of free articles is likely to be somewhere between 10 and 20.”
Like the NY Times, The Globe and Mail will remain open to social media allowing its articles to be widely shared.
Last month The New York Times gave an update on the number of paid subscribers
Last week Tim Brooks, the former managing director of The Guardian described The Times paywall as a failure, and predicted that the News International newspaper, the only one not to have a metered paywall, will evolve into a freemium model.
Globe and Mail publisher and CEO, Phillip Crawley, told an all-staff meeting that the paper had planned to implement a metered system for Report on Business content this autumn, but it has accelerated its plans to put all of the group’s content behind a paywall in response “to an unpredictable advertising market”.
Crawley also pointed to other Canadian newspapers that had implemented paywalls including the Postmedia Network owned dailies in Montreal and Victoria as well as planning for others such as the Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province.
The Wall points out that the paper is also asking staff to take unpaid leaves this summer in an attempt to reduce costs.
Although Crawley said the Globe and Mail was not talking about “permanent layoffs”, John Stackhouse, editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, said: “We’re adopting a metered approach, which means our readers will be able to access a certain number of articles across our website each month before they’re asked to pay.
“Similar leading news organisations, such as The New York Times and The Financial Times, already do this. We will let you know how many articles will be free at a later date, but most readers will not run into the limit on the meter. ”