Charging for content online so people won’t read it

By Zachary M. Seward @zseward May 13, 2009, 3:04 p.m.

There’s lots of chatter about MediaNews Group’s plan to charge for some content online. Details still TK, but this is important: MediaNews president Jody Lodovic doesn’t expect the pay wall to generate significant income.

Lodovic told Editor & Publisher’s Jennifer Saba, “The whole idea is to stop the erosion from print to online and encourage people to become print subscribers.” It’s less a revenue stream than a loss dam — and for a company with 54 daily newspapers that make nearly all of their money in print, it makes some sense. In any event, it’s a new way to think about pay walls.

POSTED May 13, 2009, 3:04 p.m.

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