Add one more element to the emerging picture of what the online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer might look like:

Hearst said its newspapers plan to hold back at least some content from their free Web sites, launching the publisher onto the vanguard of print media companies to begin charging for their digital news and information.

A top executive at Hearst, which publishes 16 newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and Seattle Post-Intelligencer, said the company is mulling how much of its online offerings to keep free, while reserving some content exclusively for people who pay.

UPDATE: Reading further into the WSJ blog post that’s behind all of the above, I now realize that the WJS‘s post is based on a memo that I posted on Slog last week. (Hello, hall of mirrors!) And my reading of the memo is somewhat different than the WSJ‘s. To me, this…

We have a revenue and business model problem as opposed to an audience problem. Yes, it is true that fewer people read a newspaper on any given day today than they did in the past, but with the proliferation of media options, consumption of individual media types isn’t what it once was and probably never will be again. Our audience is still the largest of any local news and information media outlet. And when combined with newspapers’ Internet audience, our audience has actually been growing in recent years while our revenue has been declining. So it is our business model that must change in several ways.

We believe we must begin to provide greater differentiation between the content of our free Web sites and the content of our paid product, be that paid product read in print, on a digital device like Amazon’s Kindle, or online. This doesn’t mean we wall off our Web sites behind a paid barrier. Our sites must continue to be the superior and dominant free Web sites in their markets. This means they must offer the best in breaking news, staff and reader blogs, community databases and photo galleries.

…does not exactly translate into “Hearst to Begin Charging for Digital News,” as the WSJ blog headline puts it. But we shall see. It’s clear that Hearst would like to make money wherever and however it can right now, and charging for online content would be one way to try to do that.

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...

12 replies on “WSJ: Hearst to Charge for Online Content”

  6. Hopefully the model for online media will take a turn for the better after this. I am so tired of cheap fuckers thinking that all the info on the web should be free. Let me go to your work and expect you to serve me for free.

  7. At least this will chase away all the neocons who post comments there now.

    Dudes, just do different versions with more comics.

  8. Circa 1995, the online version of the Los Angeles Times made its debut @ $5.95 a month. It was called “TimesLink” and exclusively available through *Prodigy*. Seems like the concept of pay-for-content news sites is a little dated and badly fated.

  9. Much like newspapers subscribe (or used to subscribe) to wire services I think you are going to see an “Investigative Service” crop up that gets paid by the big content providers. Example Newscorp will have one that provides content to all their local papers, radio & TV outlets. I’m sure a left wing version will crop up as well.

    What’s really going to die are small independent papers or small chains doing ‘hard news’. It will be two voices – both deeply entrenched with the two major political/business interests.

  10. We need the Seattle Tattler.

    Local news about shocking and lurid stories, complete with a pull out double sided comics page to give to the kiddies.

    That will sell.

    But I’m not buying the Seattle Times.

  11. Duh, scooped on your own story. And it’s clear from the memo Hearst is going to charge for SOME content behind that wall. So you blew the angle not once but twice.

  12. um, how is the WSJ calling Hearst “vanguard” when WSJ was one of the old timiest of print media companies to charge for online content?

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