Leadership

Johnston Press to charge for online news, but not in Ireland

27.11.2009
UK newspaper group Johnston Press, which owns a number of regional Irish newspaper titles, has no plans to charge online readers for access to its Irish papers.

It was reported yesterday that the media group is planning to introduce paid-for access for some of its newspaper websites in the UK from this Monday.

Among those titles for which online readers will have to pay to access are Northumberland Gazette, the Whitby Gazette, the Worksop Guardian and the Southern Reporter.

However, a representative of Johnston Press told the Irish Times that the paid-for access would not affect any of the group’s Irish titles as it was just a small-scale trial with no plans to roll-out it out across the rest of the group’s papers.

Johnston Press’ Irish newspapers include the Leinster Leader, Kilkenny People, Leinster Express, Offaly Express, Limerick Leader, Tipperary Star, Longford Leader, Leitrim Observer and the Dundalk Democrat.

Nevertheless, media companies are becoming increasingly anxious about the provision of free content online and are making concrete moves on the road to all-out online charging for news.

News International, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, is working towards charging for online access to news, although Murdoch recently admitted that the company may not meet its deadline of June 2010 to start charging for access to its online news sites, which include The Times, the New York Post, News of the World and The Sun.

Murdoch is also reportedly on the brink of a major deal with Microsoft’s Bing search engine whereby the Seattle software giant will pay Murdoch not to put his news on Google’s search engines.