A little more than four months after the San Francisco Chronicle began
charging online readers for some content, the newspaper's pay wall experiment
has reportedly come to an end.
The newspaper announced in March that it would place certain "premium"
stories and columns behind a pay wall, charging readers a $12 monthly
subscription fee for access to all the digital content on SFChronicle.com, which
is separate from the newspaper's free SFGate.com. News of the pay wall's
impending collapse was broken Tuesday morning on Twitter by The Verge's Casey
Newton, a former reporter at CNET and the Chronicle:
Staffers were informed of the move during a meeting Monday afternoon at the
newspaper's downtown San Francisco office, according to the SFWeekly. Oddly,
SFChronicle.com subscribers will still have the option of paying for access to
the premium-content Web site even though it will all now be freely available at
SFGate.com, the free weekly alternative newspaper reported.
CNET has contacted the Chronicle for comment and will update this report
when we learn more.
Charging readers for access to online content is a growing trend in the
newspaper business, which for the past decade has been scrambling for profits
amid sagging print advertising revenue and declining circulations. In June, The
Washington Post erected a pay wall, joining other national newspapers in
charging for online news access.
Though unusual, the demolition of a newspaper pay wall isn't unheard of. In
2007, The New York Times dismantled its TimesSelect Web service after two years
but eventually replaced it with another subscription plan that gives readers
access to 20 articles a month free of charge. Newspapers are also known to lower
pay walls temporarily during times of natural disaster.
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