Maybe timewalls are the new paywalls??
Now that it’s 2019 and not **such** a bonkers concept to ask people to pay for online journalism, newspapers — especially local ones — are in a scramble to figure out how to set up digital subscriptions and how to build a paywall that encourages/guilts readers to fork over that money. Usually, these paywalls are based on limiting the number of articles readers can read for free, but the Swedish media group MittMedia is trying something different: a time wall.
Basically, readers across 20 of MittMedia’s local/regional outlets can read any article they want within the first hour of its publication, and apparently, this strategy has led to an increased subscriber conversion rate of 20%. It’s an interesting way to think about the lifespan of an article, and how the value of a post isn’t always highest when it’s freshest — which of course, is pretty crazy to wrap your head around when it feels like being first is the only thing that matters in this biz.
Plus, a time wall also preserves a democratic element of journalism that often sits uneasily with more tightly walled-up sites, especially in times of crisis (i.e., why the NYT will disable their paywall during Hurricane Harvey coverage), and that’s pretty cool. So what we’re saying is, maybe there’s still a chance that newspapers can keep the general public informed and make money, too?
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