Journalism Online, a company that seeks to help news organizations make money on the Web, said on Thursday that more than 500 newspapers and magazines had agreed to join the venture.
Journalism Online, launched in April by three veteran US media executives, said publishers representing 176 dailies, 330 non-dailies and “leading global news sites” have signed letters of intent to become its affiliates.
“The websites of these publishers have more than 90 million monthly visitors from around the world,” the New York-based company said in a statement.
It said a payment platform would go online in the fall that would allow subscribers to access paid content at the Web sites of the affiliates using a universal Journalism Online account.
“Affiliates will select their own approach to offering paid access, based on their respective brands, content and online readership,” it said.
“Somebody could subscribe to one publication, others might want to get a package of content,” co-founder Gordon Crovitz, a former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, told reporters.
“Some access will continue to be free and the most engaged users will be required to pay,” he said.
Crovitz said the newspapers that have signed the letters of intent were “not all in the United States.”
“They’re throughout the Americas and Europe,” he said.
Asked why Journalism Online was not releasing the names of the affiliates at this time, he said: “Some of our publications want to have separate releases.”
“Some want to communicate to their readers closer to the time that they’ve determined their approach to the market,” he said.
“This is an interim update on the measure of interest in the general topic of moving toward paid content on the Web,” he said of Thursday’s announcement, which comes several days after News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch outlined plans to begin charging readers of newspapers owned by his media empire.
Newspapers across the United States have been grappling with a steep plunge in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.
Two major newspapers, the Rocky Mountain News of Denver, Colorado, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, shut down this year, and several big newspaper groups have declared bankruptcy, including the Tribune Co, publisher of several major newspapers.
Among major US newspapers, only Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal charges readers of its Web site.
Journalism Online said the models it is presenting would initially yield annual revenue targets per subscriber of US$50 to US$100 from the most engaged 10 percent of their Web sites’ online visitors “with little diminution of overall page views or online ad revenue.”
A Web site with 1 million monthly online visitors, for example, could expect to earn new revenues of US$5 million to US$10 million.
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