Germany’s top-selling tabloid to introduce paywall
Newspaper readership in Germany has been falling steadily in recent years
Europe’s top-selling newspaper said Monday it will introduce a paywall for part of its online offerings starting next month.
Main news stories will remain free of charge online, but a subscription will be required to view features, interviews and other exclusive content, German tabloid Bild said.
The basic digital subscription will cost 4.99 euros (HK$50) per month starting June 11, and twice that for a premium version that includes the tabloid as an e-paper. The Axel Springer AG-owned newspaper will also offer readers buying a print copy, at 70 euro cents (HK$7) a day, a pass to its online content. The pass will be unique to each paper, thanks to a new printing technique, which the company calls a “world premiere” for the industry.
The move comes as Europe’s newspaper publishers struggle to make up for lost advertisement revenue and shrinking circulation numbers. Analysts say publishers across Europe will be closely watching whether Bild’s paywall will succeed, as many of them hope to follow the move of Europe’s biggest publishing house.
“It is a change of paradigm toward a culture of paying for journalistic content online,” said Donata Hopfen, managing director of Bild’s digital division. “It’s a mammoth project.”
Bild’s online offering is currently Germany’s No. 1 news website — a position it hopes to defend by hiding only some content behind the paywall. The company decided against a metered paywall — which limits users to a number of free articles per month, a model championed by The New York Times. Instead, Bild will decide on a daily basis which articles or video products will be labelled as premium content that requires a so-called Bild plus subscription. It is planning to increase the share of paid content over time, hoping that readers will be increasingly ready to pay for it.