Paywalls

Restricting access to Internet content via a paid subscription is often called a paywall. Three high level models of paywall have emerged: hard paywalls that allow no free content and prompt the user straight away to pay in order to read, listen or watch the content, soft paywalls that allow some free content, such as an abstract or summary, and metered paywalls that allow a set number of free articles that a reader can access over a specific period of time, allow more flexibility in what users can view without subscribing. Newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites in the mid-2010s to increase their revenue, which had been diminishing due to a decline in paid print readership and advertising revenue.Academic papers are often subject to a paywall, and available typically to researchers via academic libraries that subscribe.

Paywalls have also been used to increase the number of print subscribers; for example, some newspapers offer access to online content plus delivery of a Sunday print edition at a lower price than online access alone. Newspaper websites such as that of the Boston Globe and the New York Times use this tactic because it increases both their online revenue and their print circulation (which in turn provides more ad revenue).

Creating online ad revenue has been an ongoing battle for newspapers – in 2011 an online advertisement brought in only 10–20% of the funds brought in by an identical print ad. It is said that "neither digital ad cash nor digital subscriptions via a paywall are in anything like the shape that will be needed for [newspapers] to take the strain if a print presence is wiped away." According to Poynter media expert Bill Mitchell, in order for a paywall to generate sustainable revenue, newspapers must create "new value"—higher quality, innovation, etc.—in their online content that merits payment which previously free content did not. Most news coverage of the use of paywalls analyzes them from the perspective of commercial success, whether through increasing revenue by increasing print subscriptions or solely through paywall revenue. However, as a solely profit-driven device, the use of a paywall also brings up questions of media ethics pertaining to accessible democratic news coverage.

The Wall Street Journal set up and has continued to maintain a "hard" paywall. It continued to be widely read, acquiring over one million users by mid-2007, and 15 million visitors in March 2008.

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