The Times and the Sunday Times websites will begin charging for access from June of this year, their owner News International has announced.
Users will be asked to pay £1 for a day’s access and £2 for a weekly subscription.
Both the Times and the Sunday Times will launch new, separate websites in May. These will be free to registered customers for a trial period. Any payment on either website will allow access to the other site.
“This is just the start. The Times and the Sunday Times are the first of our four titles in the UK to move to this new approach. We will continue to develop our digital products and to invest and innovate for our customers,” said Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News International, which also publishes the the Sun and News of the World.
“At a defining moment for journalism, this is a crucial step towards making the business of news an economically exciting proposition,” Brooks added.
News International is News Corp’s UK newspaper unit. News Corp’s CEO Rupert Murdoch has been vocal in his support for charging for online news and has previously said that the days of free news on the web are over.
In the US, the New York Times has also said it will start charging users for access to online articles from 2011.
Photo: News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch
Photo: WEF/swiss-image.ch/Remy Steinegger
Article courtesy of Businessandleadership.com
