online news

According to the research by Pew Internet Project while most of US consumers like reading news online just one in five is willing to pay for it. In those cases when a news site charges a pay for subscription or pay-per-article fees over 4/5 of readers are looking for other sources of information online.

The study confirms that it would be too hard for media entities to get online readers pay for news.

On Wednesday the New York Times Co announced that it would deploy a "metered model," charging readers for access after they read a certain number of articles in a month. Those readers who get the paper delivered at home would get free access to the website.

"This process of rethinking our business model has also been driven by our desire to achieve additional revenue diversity that will make us less susceptible to the inevitable economic cycles," Chief Executive Janet Robinson said in a statement.

 News publishers were offered a solution to their problem of charging online readers for their content. In order to retain its main news providers Google launched a First Click Free program that limits the readers to up to 5 free visits to a publisher website.

 Google seems to be seriously challenged by Microsoft who approached News Corp as well as other news companies to offer them shift their sites to Bing searching engine. According to the sources with the knowledge of the matter Microsoft is in talks with News Corp over the agreement that would involve News Corp getting paid to take its news websites off Google Inc.

The source reports that News Corp, which owns such papers as the Wall Street Journal and the Sun, started the discussions, which were at an early stage.

 The industry of web based news sources changes in direction of increasing video content as news websites are starting to look more like a TV channel than a newspaper, notes the New York Times. Among the websites that are featuring video much more prominently on their home pages are CNN.com and ESPN.com with The Wall Street Journal also having moved its video player front and center providing a twice-a-day live newscast on WSJ.com.