By: E&P Staff The Sunday Times of London announced Monday it will set up its own Web site and may charge users to access its content, according to an online report by the Financial Times.
However, no specific launch date for the Web site was announced, and the paper's parent company would not confirm whether the Web site would follow a free, hybrid, or paid-for model.
The Sunday Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News International, would be the first Sunday paper in the United Kingdom to launch a separate Web site from its sister daily. Currently, the Sunday Times is published online, along with the Times daily edition, under the brand Times Online. The idea of making users pay for content is also a break with the norm, as traditionally British newspapers offer their online content free of charge.
"It is only really by having a lot of their own breaking news that they will be able to generate enough traffic to make this work," Douglas McCabe, publishing analyst at Enders Analysis, told FT.com. "It will be very interesting to see how they manage it ... We live in a global culture of free news, and that will prove hard to change."
Unlike American newspapers, British Sunday newspapers, including the Sunday Times, produce stories that are the exclusive product of their own reporting.
Murdoch had previously announced in May that he was considering implementing different pay models for his British newspapers, which also include the tabloid The Sun and its sister Sunday paper News of The World. At the time, Murdoch said: "The current days of the Internet will soon be over."
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