After much talk and speculation today is the day when the New York Times paywall finally goes live – well, that is unless you live in Canada where you were lucky enough to see it implemented last week.  The trend towards paywalls is a one that has been a bit of hot topic in the industry for most of last year and now, with the NYT taking the plunge, it is worth exploring some of the comments out there on the issue.

Maybe the first voice to consider is that Martin Nisenholtz, NYT Digital Czar, speaking with Peter Kafka of MediaMemo.  Nisenholtz implies he isn’t expecting the majority of readers to become paying readers, just the plan is to convert a minority of heavy users into subscribers, with the intention of remaining a “very very large player” on the Web.  With ad revenues on the increase, in the UK at least, then perhaps the NYT are attempting to find a “third way” between paywall and free access?

Two other articles that really caught our eyes are these from Fast Company and Harvard Business Review, both looking a bit deeper at paywalls and the potential thought processes behind them for consumers.  With Web, iPad, and Web plus iPad options now available, not to mention the 20 free articles each month, who knew paywalls could be so cognitively taxing?!

Finally, paidContent have put together this handy comparison chart of how the biggest US newspaper paywalls match up:

What are your views on paywalls?  Will you, or do you, subscribe to any? Let us know below.

In the States both McClatchy and Media General have teamed up with Groupon to offer localised daily deals, the NYT have their own TimesLimited and now Hearst have a white label agreement with Analog Analytics to offer similar local deals.

European publishers aren’t too far behind as the Telegraph, DMGT, Archant, and Axel Springer are all moving into the group buying space, with rival publishers surely not too far behind.

Of course, as the home of content aggregation, the team here at Moreover are busy working away on a “one stop shop” for all the deals in your area, so if you’re interested in receiving one of our free daily alerts for all the deals where you live then get in touch below!

The past year saw the worlds of news and mobile collide, as the iPhone and iPad both grew in market share, the article in particular cites the innovative apps from the Washington Post and CNN, both integrating a social media element to them taking them beyond the realms of traditional news.  From here the article predicts a further grow in mobile applications, but a greater focus on social media as the social web continues to change our online experience.

Beyond social and mobile, the article also looks at the influence of WikiLeaks, the M&A climate, location-based services and the future of news syndication.  But for the full low down, read the full article here.

We’d love to know your musings and thoughts for the upcoming year, either on news or further afield.  If 2010 was the year of Facebook, can we expect more of the same in 2011?

So what will drive this downfall?  Dawson predicts newsprint will be replaced by mobile devices, tablets computers and the advance in technology of lightweight digital papers.  We’ve already seen that e-editions of newspapers are rising quickly, but quick enough to see the end of newspapers as we know them in the UK and US by the end of the decade?

UK Newspaper Website Visitors

The figures look even more favourable for Moreover/the Beeb when you look exclusively at the UK numbers, putting search engines aside the BBC becomes the number one referring site for the British press driving over 1.2 million UK clicks in April of this year.

With the BBC determined to continue this trend, becoming a “window on the Web” and see its rate of referring click-throughs double by 2012, this is a great example of how aggregators like Moreover can work with and serve the publishers for a common good.

(image credit alextorrenegra)

The two juggernauts of the U.S. newspaper world are both experimenting with new initiatives to broaden their appeal beyond traditional audiences.

The New York Times looks set to expand its local editions into ten to 15 cities in the near future.  paidContent.org sums things up nicely, also drawing on yesterday’s Audit Bureau of Circulation figures and pointing to the various considerations the NYT should mull over before doing so.  Interestingly one being:

What about the Journal? The Journal is starting to move on local editions as well. Will it meet the NYT expanded challenge with local partnerships of its own?

With the Wall Street Journal also vying for the localised market this could get interesting, leading us seamlessly onto…

In partnership with the WSJ, foursquare has developed an interesting feature allowing users to see news articles as tips when they check into various locations across New York City.  With tips being editorially hand-picked, to avoid unpleasantries creeping in, this could be a nice feature with plenty of room to grow beyond the shores of NYC.

Blog site paidContent:UK broke the story and, as ever, does a thorough write-up on the facts. They report how the Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA), owned by the major UK publishers, recently introduced a licensing system allowing online access to member sites to those companies signing up for the online use license.

With Meltwater being the only non-NLA compliant agency, and now this action from Murdoch’s News International, it is shaping up to be an interesting year for copyright as the publishing industry adapts to the changes in the online marketplace.

Outsell picks up on the recent Nielsen blog post Changing Model: A Global Perspective on Paying for Online Content, which investigates whether consumers will be willing to pay for online news content. This study matches previous findings from Forrester and Outsell’s own research, essentially that when it comes to media content consumers seem less willing to pay for news than other types of media.

Such findings lead Outsell to conclude that consumers have been conditioned to spend on particular content at particular price points, and that household budgets are pretty fixed. Would you be prepared to cancel that ESPN TV subscription to pay for access to your local newspaper online? So rather than expecting a change in business models to be the next big thing, Outsell suggests publishers place more focus on “serious product design, user engagement, and the things that delight and differentiate”.

Certainly food for thought, as the recession eases and ad spending looks to be slowly bouncing back will the trend toward paywalls lose some momentum?

Horrocks describes social media as a vital source of a opinions and voices, along with the credibility that audience driven content brings with it. And with that brings a new understanding and appreciation of social media for the BBC, who just last year remained cautious over its use.

It is great to see a leading news outlet as the BBC embrace social media in such a way, following in the footsteps of CNN who during a recent site redesign have also tightly integrated user-generated content into their news content.

(image credit skpy)

It seems a week can’t go by at the moment without the debate around newspaper paywalls generating more column inches. ReadWriteWeb picked up on an interesting story concerning Newsday and the apparent lack of success seen by its recent subscription revenue model. Having spent $4 million on redesigning the site anticipating the introduction of a paywall but the subsequent return of only 35 subscribers in a three-month period doesn’t look good. However, by digging a little deeper the figures aren’t quite so clear-cut, as subscribers to the local cable company also enjoy free access to the Newsday site, so it is probably unfair to draw too many conclusions on this example alone. The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger also spoke out on paywalls this week, paidContent gives an excellent write-up on the speech here.

As we mentioned previously the much vaunted Apple iPad was announced this week and the potential for media does look attractive. The sharp, display, ability to embed videos into articles and the New York Times app already being demoed it looks like an exciting mix of the more traditional paper form and the digital future, although whether the device takes off and publishers create the dynamic content necessary remains to be seen.