Newspaper paywalls can work, but need fresh thinking

Originally published January 2012, when newspaper paywalls were still experimental. Updated January 2026 after fourteen years of subscription model evolution.

Fourteen years later: What we learned 

The arguments made in 2012, see later down this post, proved largely correct. Newspaper paywalls did become widespread, but publishers learned painful lessons about pricing, flexibility and reader expectations. By 2026, subscription models have matured but challenges remain:

What succeeded: Major international publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post built substantial digital subscriber bases through bundled offerings, flexible pricing and quality journalism. The Times passed 10 million digital subscribers—proving the model can work at scale.

In New Zealand the NZ Herald's paywall is regarded as a major success and the NBR continues to serve its small, yet lucrative niche, exclusively from behind a paywall.

The Herald succeeded by maintaining market dominance and offering essential local news readers couldn't get elsewhere, while the NBR's focused business audience mirrors the specialist financial publishers that made paywalls work from the beginning.

Meanwhile, Stuff abandoned its earlier paywall experiment before rebooting with The Post. Newer outlets like Newsroom and The Spinoff have explored voluntary contribution models—proving there's no single formula for New Zealand's small, fragmented market.

What failed: Regional newspapers that simply slapped paywalls on existing content without improving quality or user experience. Many discovered that readers resist poor value propositions, regardless of price.

What changed: Publishers learned that language matters—"subscriptions" sell better than "paywalls." They also discovered the importance of flexible options: day passes, article bundles and tiered subscriptions address the commitment barrier identified in 2012. 

The core insight remains true: online and print are fundamentally different products requiring different pricing models.

Paywalls... although don't call them that

Newspaper publishers struggling to make money from on-line advertising see reader paywalls as an obvious way to boost revenue.

Newspaper publishers struggling to make money from online advertising see reader paywalls as an obvious way to boost revenue. Newspapers had missed earlier opportunities to build sustainable digital models.

We knew early on that paywalls work well for specialist financial publishers. In 2012 it was not clear if they could work for more general news publications. We now know that they can, but it is not straightforward. More publishers have failed to successfully impose formal paywalls or subscriptions than those that have succeeded.

Readers happily paid for their print newspapers. Some still do. New Zealand’s still existing printed daily newspapers cost around NZ$2.

So you might think NZ$2 a day for the online paper is reasonable.

Here are three reasons why it isn’t:

1. Print newspapers are made and distributed. The cost of running a print plant and running trucks is higher than the cost of moving pixels around. Newspaper sellers take a cut of the cover price. Any on-line sales would be direct. The potential cost savings are huge. Readers expect publishers to pass on some of the cost savings.
2. Readers who buy print newspapers generally read a number of stories. They could conceivably read the paper cover to cover then do the crosswords and Sudoku puzzles. Nobody reads like this online. As a rule online readers skip from publication to publication grazing on material. This behavior makes justifying subscription costs difficult, as readers may only want occasional access.
3. Print newspapers don’t have realistic free competitors. Broadcast radio and TV news is free, but it doesn’t directly compete with printed papers in the way, say, Radio New Zealand’s web site is just a click away from Stuff.co.nz.
4. Print newspapers don't have realistic free competitors. Broadcast radio and TV news is free, but it doesn't directly compete with printed papers in the way, say, Radio New Zealand's web site is just a click away from Stuff.co.nz. This competition makes it challenging to earn subscription revenue from journalism.

For all these reasons, newspaper publishers are asking considerably less from on-line readers than print readers pay.

And rightly so. Instead they sell subscriptions. The Australian charges A$3 a week for an online subscription. You can’t buy one day’s on-line paper, nor can readers make a small payment to reach a single paywalled story. In fact, while the price is advertised as dollars per week, customers have to buy a whole month’s access at a time.

For all these reasons, newspaper publishers charge inline readers considerably less than the print cover price suggests.

Modern publishers offer various approaches:

• The New York Times charges around US$5 per week for basic digital access, with options for day passes and bundled print+digital
• The Guardian uses a voluntary contribution model, requesting support without hard paywalls. The continual needy pop-ups are profoundly annoying to casual readers.
• Substack newsletters let individual journalists charge $5-15 per month directly to readers

Yet the 2012 problem persists: most models still require monthly commitments. Publishers have experimented with micropayments and day passes, but implementation remains inconsistent. The subscription economy challenge means every news subscription competes with Netflix, Spotify, You Tube and dozens of other services.

Asking readers to pay in advance for a whole month at a time still seems wrong. Sure, many readers already subscribe to a daily newspaper delivery, but many others don’t. They buy a print paper as and when they feel a need. There needs to be an on-line equivalent requiring less commitment.

Subscription overload

The challenge has intensified since 2012. Subscription fatigue is real—readers juggle multiple subscriptions across entertainment, software and news.

The "just $3 a week" pitch that seemed reasonable in 2012 now competes with 20 other similar requests. This creates a second digital divide—between those who can afford multiple news subscriptions and those who can't.

Public-interest journalism becomes gated behind paywalls, raising questions about informed citizenship and democracy. Some publishers have recognized this. Major investigations are often made free. Breaking news typically sits outside paywalls. But the tension between business sustainability and public service remains unresolved.

Publishers need to think carefully about their terminology. As argued elsewhere on this site, the language of 'subscriptions, not paywalls' matters when framing the value proposition."

More on journalism and media: 

This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, digital adaptation and subscription economics: 

• Apple's iPad won't save newspapers.
• Why I'm a technology and business writer, not a geek.
• Digital subscription spending hits the wall.
• Journalists too mean to tech companies.
• IndieWeb offers independence to journalists.
• Old school journalism writing habits are powerful tools