Imagine paying for online news.

AFTER suffering a nett loss of S$5 billion in the last business year, media giant News Corporation in August 2009 announced plans to charge for access to its online newspapers. It already charges for online access to The Wall Street Journal. The company owns the New York Post, and The Times and The Sun in the United Kingdom.

Other popular newspapers such as the New York Times and The Financial Times intend to follow suit. The Financial Times Web site has more than 1.3 million nonpaying registered users worldwide, with another 110,000 paying subscribers.

The online Straits Times allows surfers to read parts of the articles free but to access the full article, they must pay S$15 a month or S$120 a year.

While the older generation has a habit of reading the pulp version of newspapers, the younger generation prefers to read the online version. I suspect they only browse through the main stories rather than reading the bulk of the articles in depth. They may also feel the pinch of paying for the hard copy but will readily accept the free tabloids they get at the transport interchanges.

For publishers to successfully charge for their online content, the majority of newspapers must adopt this model otherwise there is nothing to stop the surfer from getting the latest news from another Web site that is free. As there are thousands of online newspapers worldwide, it is not possible to get all the publishers to cooperate. In any case, for those starved for news, there is always the radio or television which can provide free content as they can get revenue from advertising.

Newspapers on the other hand have seen their advertising revenue plummet as they lose out to other advertising media. Supporting a large editorial staff is very expensive and if they were to reduce the number of writers and subeditors, the quality and depth of the content will suffer.

Newspapers are not the only medium affected by the change of habits, magazines are also affected. In August 2009, the Reader's Digest Association filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States. Sustained over the years by its aggressive direct mail attempts to garner subscriptions, the passing of this widely read magazine will signal the start of winding down of pulp magazines.

While I belong to the older generation of readers, I find that the reporting styles of some magazines have deliberately been changed in a feeble attempt to compete with the Worldwide Web. One example is Time magazine. It is no longer the same newsweekly founded by Henry Luce so when my subscription expires, I may resort to reading it from time to time (pun intended) on the Net.

R Tan Chee Teik

Editor