The paywall race is on as News Limited prepares to make people pay to access its content under a News+ banner. The firm has registered a domain name, AdNews understands, and an application for News+.
A News spokesperson said that timings were under wraps for a subscription model rollout across further mastheads. The company did not confirm whether the paywall would apply across all of its 130 mastheads in Australia. Neither would News confirm the News+ story, highlighted yesterday by tech PR site, Influencing.
“We announced last year that News Limited would extend its digital subscription to mastheads beyond The Australian and Herald Sun." said a spokesperson in a statement. "We have not announced which mastheads this will cover. We will do this in time.”
The news comes as Rupert Murdoch is in town. The News chief has made no secret of the firm's plans to make readers pay for its content. In the UK, The Times was the first mainstream broadsheet to erect a paywall. This has since been followed by The Telegraph. Last week best selling tabloid The Sun confirmed it would start charging readers to access content.
It is not yet clear how far News will extend its paywalls, or what content may still be made available free of charge to readers.
Fairfax has yet to confirm when it will start charging readers to access masthead content in Australia. A spokesperson yesterday told AdNews that it would not yet disclose the impact on traffic of making readers outside of Australia pay to access content until after the domestic paywall launch.
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