Introducing the Paywall

The article presents a longitudinal and comparative quantitative content analysis of the paywall strategies of three Norwegian online newspapers. The article analyses the open and closed content profiles of Aftenposten, Bergens Tidende and Stavanger Aftenblad before and after the walls were erected, and the content put behind the wall with the content open to the public free of charge, by comparing one week of data from each paper from 2012, 2013 and 2014 (N = 4018). The analysis compares two models for digital subscription–—the metered model and the premium model. The research is operationalized as a question of monetization: what kind of content do online newspapers charge for, and what kind of content remains free? As the analysis demonstrates, the answers to these questions are not only linked to online-related conceptions of news values, they are also closely tied to the market position of the newspaper as a whole. Results show that the premium model primarily reserves content with local affiliation for subscription readers, while wire copy, syndicated content and immediacy news remain open to non-subscribers. As such, open online news content is highly traffic-generating, while paywalled content protects the most valued and resource-demanding journalistic production of the newsroom.