Paywalls for regional press?

I see on Hold The Front Page today that some JP weekly titles are to pilot a paywall scheme, whereby users pay £5 for three months’ access to parts of the titles’ websites.

I can understand completely why regional publishers want to do this.

Their idea of transfering the print concept of display advertising online has largely failed and publishers have so far struggled to monetise their web operations.

I also understand that they need to monetise this part of their operation. Journalism doesn’t pay for itself.

I also see the argument that what they offer is sufficiently niche enough to charge for it.

However, I fear that by hiding content behind paywalls in a medium where people expect free content and where they have never before paid for local news content may be too much of a stretch.

I think it could also play straight into the hands of an emerging sector I keep prattling on about here – that of community media.

Organisations like Talk About Local and , to a lesser degree, Manchester’s People’s Voice Media, which are encouraging local communities to empower themselves by running their own local news sites and becoming community reporters will surely benefit from regional press paywalls.

The sites and social media that they’ve helped people to set up will surely only grow in popularity.

Existing community sites like the Salford Star and Ventnor Blog on the Isle of Wight already offer a decent alternative to mainstream news organisations.

By going in this direction, regional press publishers run the risk of alienating their online readers and increasing the lack of access to local news which is already gaping because of declining circulations of the printed product.

They’re playing into the hands of local bloggers and sites – and let’s not forget the spectre of the BBC’s free content.

The social and democratic ramifications of introducing paywalls really ought to be discussed and raised somewhere more important than my humble little blog!

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