The Irish Times is about to erect a paywall around its newspaper content and in the process may make it more difficult (or even impossible) for online readers to access free newspaper content. This development comes less than two years after the newspaper dropped the previous subscription paywall and gave free access to its newspaper content.
From next Thursday, visitors to IrishTimes.com will find that the familiar Today’s Paper page will disappear. In its place you will be encouraged to use the new ePaper service, for a fee of between €1.80 (that issue only) or €89 for an annual subscription. Initially, you can try it out on a free trial basis but, ultimately, the aim is to provide the ePaper through this subscription service.
Falling circulations, growing evidence that young adults and others are not buying newspapers and downward trends in adverting revenues are all having a serious impact on newspapers, including The Irish Times.
Subscription renewals
The Irish Times’s previous foray into paid subscriptions was not a roaring success. Channelled through Ireland.com, many subscribers chose not to renew their subscriptions when the newspaper decided in 2008 to hive off the newspaper content into IrishTimes.com and make it free. Ireland.com did its best to hold on to its subscribers. This is an extract of one of a series of emails sent at the time to subscribers
As a subscriber to Premium Content, we are offering you a month’s free trial to The Irish Times Archive and The Irish Times Crossword Club. The Irish Times Archive provides access to the full article archive back to 1859 in both digital and text format. The Crossword Club includes an interactive version of the daily Simplex and Crosaire along with a 10 year archive of both crosswords.
Not exactly compelling! It will be interesting to see how many will sign up to the ePaper service.
Update 19 March
Read the IrishTimes.com response to this post.
