Digital First Will Add Paywalls at Most of its Daily Newspapers

By: Andrew Beaujon | Poynter

Digital First Media plans to expand its paywall offerings to most of its 75 daily newspapers, CEO John Paton says in a blog post. The paywalls will be an all-access model. Paton, a noted skeptic about paywalls in the past, writes that while “digital advertising has grown more than 89 percent,” the company needs “more gas in the tank if we are going to complete this journey of print-to-digital transformation.”

Let’s be clear, paid digital subscriptions are not a long-term strategy. They don’t transform anything; they tweak. At best, they are a short-term tactic.