Reluctance to Pay for Online News Remains High

The 2014 edition of the Digital News Report, an annual publication issued by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, revealed that the willingness to pay for online news content remains remarkably low. Only 11% of the 18,000 online consumers surveyed for the study stated to have paid for any type of online news in the past year. According to the study, the absolute number of people paying for digital news remained almost unchanged compared to last year, after last year's study had revealed a significant uptick in paying news readers.

Over the past few years, online publishers have tried a number of ways to get readers to pay for online news content. Paywalls, metered paywalls and voluntary payments are among the methods tried and tested to finally convince readers that online content is worth paying for.