Paywalls: New Adopters and "Sandbag Strategies"

In Tuesday's class, we talked extensively about paywalls, a way in which news websites restrict access to their content by "forcing" users to purchase an online subscription. As it turns out, it's simple to work around the block.

The New York Times may be the most well-known newspaper to enable the paywall blockade, and based on an article posted yesterday on Forbes, they might finally be reaping benefits: the Times reported that their home delivery circulation rose 0.2% over the last six months. According to the paper, this is the first time that circulation has increased in over five years.

Their success seems to be encouraging other news outlets to adopt a similar model. In an article posted yesterday on Fox 9 News, the Star Tribune — a newspaper that reportedly draws in 2.3 million readers to its website each month — has enacted a 20-article paywall, as well.

Mathew Ingram at Gigaom calls these paywalls "sandbag strategies" in that their ultimate goal is to increase print circulation and, in turn, hike up advertising prices:

...The biggest knock against the paywall is that it has virtually nothing to do with actually taking advantage of the digital world in any concrete way. It’s just charging people nickels and dimes for their paper, the way the NYT and other newspapers have for a century and a half or so. In that sense, it’s not really a strategy at all; it’s more like a line of sandbags designed to shore up the print business and squeeze as much money out of it as possible as it declines. A wise move? Perhaps. Something to get excited about? No.