The disastrous launch of the London Times' paid website is just the latest media "paywall" to run into trouble. Here, a history of how newspapers have failed — and succeeded — when asking readers to pay for online content. For every notable success like The Wall Street Journal's website, which boasts over 1 million online subscribers, there is a failure.
The Times puts its content behind a $3-a-week paywall, and promptly loses 90 percent of its online readership, according to some reports. This "could be indicative of what the rest of the newspaper industry can expect to undergo in the coming years," says Alla Goldman in the Bivings Report.
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