The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer could be among the first newspapers to adopt a pay wall system called Press+ developed by entrepreneurs Steven Brill, L. Gordon Crovitz and their partners, according to The New York Times.
The Intelligencer Journal-Lancaster New Era of Lancaster, Pa., is “one of the first handful of news outlets to acknowledge in interviews that it intends, in the next few months, to start using the software system,” the NYT report says. The article mentions the Fayetteville paper and GlobalPost, a news site based in Boston, as “others interested.”
Initially the Pennsylvania paper “will charge only readers outside its immediate area and only for reading obituaries, with a little green Press+ logo next to each headline covered by the system,” the NYT says. “It will allow a reader to see a certain number of obituaries free before a box pops onto the screen demanding a flat fee to keep reading, but the paper has not yet decided what that number will be, or how much it will charge.”
“The first publishers planning to launch on the platform are currently integrating our software, in anticipation of offering paid access later this winter when our consumer-facing logo, Press+, will be presented to the public,” Brill and Crovitz say in a memo at paidcontent.org.
“The timing for these initiatives could not be better,” Brill and Crovitz continue. “Our industry is adapting, and it’s now clear that many sites, large and small, will be soon be charging their most engaged online readers for access. Studies show that readers will pay for distinctive brands and content. … In short, the question is no longer “if,” but “when” and “how.””
The Times points out that, “there are plenty of skeptics who say that charging (for online content) could be a short-lived experiment.”