WaPo To Add Paywall

This summer the Washington Post will erect a paywall similar that used by the New York Times, with a limit of 20 free articles per month.

The step, while modest compared with moves by some other publications, marks a major change for The Post, which has shied away from what is known as a paywall for fear of driving away readers and online advertisers. It now joins a long list of other daily publications that charge for content, including the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Boston Globe and the New York Times.

“News consumers are savvy; they understand the high cost of a top-quality news gathering operation and the importance of maintaining the kind of in-depth reporting for which The Post is known,” Katharine Weymouth, publisher of The Post, said in a statement. “Our digital package is a valuable one, and we are going to ask our readers to pay for it and help support our news gathering as they have done for many years with the print edition.”

What news sites do you presently pay to access?

Andrew Sullivan To Install Paywall

Andrew Sullivan today announced that he is ending his relationship with the Daily Beast and will erect a paywall on his new standalone site. He writes:

"Remember the classic saying: 'If you're not paying for the product, you are the product being sold.' We want to treat our readers better than that, because you deserve better than that. Hence the purest, simplest model for online journalism: you, us, and a meter. Period. No corporate ownership, no advertising demands, no pressure for pageviews ... just a concept designed to make your reading experience as good as possible, and to lead us not into temptation. So for the next month, we're going to offer you advance membership of the Dish for $19.99 a year, which translates to $1.67 a month, which is around a nickel a day.

The meter won't start until February, and the price won't change then, but by pre-subscribing, you give us a crucial financial bridge to get to independence - and you'll never notice a thing when the transition happens. To be honest, we didn't know where to set the price - we have almost no precedents for where we want to go - but $19.99 seemed the lowest compatible with a serious venture. We wanted to make this as affordable as possible, while maximizing revenues."

Many newspapers already have paywalls, but Sullivan is (possibly) the most prominent blogger to go that route.