【英语国际】美国报纸业押注数字内容收费

As more newspapers close the door on free access to their websites, some publishers are still waiting for paying customers to pour in.

The numbers of readers signing up so far suggest that at many papers, 'paywalls' aren't about to reverse publishers' deteriorating finances. Yet the results aren't discouraging industry executives, who say their efforts are succeeding in shoring up the core print business after years of declines.

Tribune Co.'s Los Angeles Times as of Monday will begin charging for full online access. Publisher Gannett Co. also said it will join the ranks. Including them, about 10 major U.S. papers and several hundred smaller papers in the past year have said they are now or will soon limit full online access to subscribers who pay either for the print edition or for digital.

So far, the Star Tribune in Minneapolis has attracted 14,000 digital subscribers -- equivalent to about 5.7% of its existing weekday print subscribers -- since it started charging readers for its website in November. The Boston Globe has sold about 16,000 digital subscriptions, which include those for mobile devices, in the three months after it launched a paid website last fall, compared with its daily print circulation of about 200,000. Meanwhile, Newsday in New York had fewer than 1,000 paying digital subscribers two years after erecting an online paywall.

The industry has little choice but to keep trying. Over the past decade or so, with newspapers' content available free online, their finances have been devastated. Newspapers saw weekday circulation drop by nearly 10 million from 1999 to 2009, about 17% of the total, according to the Editor & Publisher International Yearbook. Print advertising revenue was cut almost in half in that period, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

The rate of decline has slowed recently, but online ad revenue isn't growing fast enough to make up for the erosion of print.

Executives say these efforts are less about adding digital subscribers than they are about eliminating readers' incentive to ditch their print subscription for free alternatives online. In television, cable channels are trying to protect their business by giving online access to their programs only to subscribers who are cable or satellite-TV subscribers. The question with newspapers, however, is whether their paywalls are too little, too late after years of subscriber and advertising erosion.

Some big newspapers have had success with paywalls. The Wall Street Journal, which has restricted access to some online content since the mid-1990s, had about 537,000 digital subscribers as of last fall, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. About 80,000 of them read versions for tablets, smartphones or e-readers, while the rest get the online edition. Pearson PLC's Financial Times, which launched its current pay model in late 2007, had 267,000 digital subscribers as of the end of last year, the company said.

Since New York Times Co. began charging for online access to its flagship paper last March, it has signed up 380,000 paid digital subscribers. That is about half of its daily print circulation.

But these may be the exceptions more than the rule. The Journal and the Financial Times preceded the rest of the industry, and offer specialized business-news content. And the Times started with more than 30 million monthly unique visitors to its website in the U.S., according to comScore Inc. That large number was an advantage for conversion rates, said Martin Nisenholtz, who retired in December as senior vice president of digital operations at New York Times Co.

The challenge for all papers is that free content is still plentiful online. And many papers don't provide much motivation for new sign-ups. Most publishers are giving full online access to existing print subscribers, so the pool of potential new digital subscribers is relatively small. Also, many publishers are using the so-called metered strategy, under which nonsubscribers can read a certain number of articles free. Typically, only around 10% to 20% of their online readers visit the site enough to run into the pay requirement, depending on where the threshold is set. The Boston Globe and Newsday use more rigid paywalls.

The advantage of the metered strategy is traffic doesn't nosedive, allowing the websites to retain most of their reader base and online-ad revenue.

Many say the subscriber numbers are beside the point. Distributing news to online readers is much cheaper than delivering papers, so digital readers are inherently more profitable per capita. At the Star Tribune, the 14,000 people who are paying about $100 a year for a digital subscription to the paper are bringing about $1.4 million in annual revenue. Without printing and distribution costs, more of that revenue shows up in the bottom line, publisher Michael Klingensmith says.

Meanwhile, the Star Tribune's page views declined only about 12% since the paper began charging for full access to the website, so the revenue from new digital subscriptions exceeds revenue lost from declining traffic by 15 times, he said. 'I would make that trade all day,' Mr. Klingensmith said.

Yet in the broader context of the business, those figures hardly register. The Star Tribune in the six months through September had about 100,000 fewer weekday print subscribers than it did in the same period five years earlier. The current annual price of a daily print subscription is about $244.

There is some evidence that limiting digital access is helping to stem print declines. The New York Times, which launched a metered system a year ago, said that in the six months through last September, Sunday circulation increased year-over-year for the first time in five years.

Gannett Chief Executive Gracia Martore said the company expects the paywall to add $100 million to the bottom line in 2013 and contribute, with price increases, to a 25% rise in total annual subscription revenue at the company's 80 community newspapers where a pay model is being adopted.

A Sampling of Some Paywall Plans

Boston Globe: Limited free access. Print subscribers get full access to website; nonprint subscribers pay $3.99 a week. (16,000 paid digital subscribers as of the end of 2011.)

Star Tribune Online: readers get 20 free articles per month. Full access costs $1.99 a week. Most print subscribers get free digital access. (14,000 online subscribers to date.)

New York Times: Readers get 20 free articles per month. Print subscribers get free digital access. Basic digital package costs $195 a year. (380,000 paid digital subscribers as of the end of 2011.)

Wall Street Journal: Only some free articles. A basic, online-only subscription is $207 a year. (537,469 paid digital subscribers as of September 2011.)

在越来越多的报纸不再让用户免费阅读其网站之际，部分出版机构仍在等待付费用户大量进入。

从目前为止的订户数量来看，很多报社建立的“付费专区”并不能马上扭转出版商财务的恶化之势。但这样的结果并没有使行业高管灰心，他们说，这些措施正成功地稳住多年一直下滑的核心出版业务。

Bloomberg News纽约时报公司去年3月针对旗舰报纸《纽约时报》的网络阅读权限收费，迄今已有38万数字版付费订户。到下周一，Tribune Co.旗下的《洛杉矶时报》(Los Angeles Times)将开始针对其网站的完全阅读权限收费。出版商Gannett Co.也表示将会这样做。包括它们在内，过去一年有大约10家美国主流报纸和数百家规模较小的报纸表示，已经或将于不久之后只让印刷版或数字版的付费用户获得完全的网络阅读权限。

明尼阿波利斯州的《明星论坛报》(Star Tribune)于去年11月开始向阅读其网站内容的读者收费，迄今吸引数字订户1.4万，大约相当于工作日印刷版现有订户数量的5.7%。《波士顿环球报》(Boston Globe)去年秋季推出付费阅读网站，之后三个月获得大约1.6万个数字版订户，其中包括移动终端用户；相比之下，该报每日印刷版的发行量在20万份左右。而纽约的《Newsday》在建立网络付费专区两年之后，数字版付费订户数量尚不足1,000。

整个行业除了继续尝试以外别无他法。过去10年左右，由于报纸内容可在网上免费阅读，它们的财务受到重创。据《编辑与出版人国际年鉴》(Editor & Publisher International Yearbook)数据，从1999年到2009年，报纸的工作日发行量下降接近1,000万份，降幅在17%左右。据美国报业协会(Newspaper Association of America)数据，同一段时间内印刷版广告收入接近减半。

下降速度最近有所放缓，但网络版广告收入的增长速度不足以弥补印刷版的恶化。

付费专区样本《波士顿环球报》：限制免费阅读。印刷版订户获得完整的网站阅读权限，非印刷版订户的读者每周支付3.99美元。（截至2011年年底数字版付费订户为1.6万。）
《明星论坛报》网络版：读者每月可免费阅读20篇文章。获得完整阅读权限需每周支付1.99美元。多数印刷版订户都拥有免费阅读数字版的权限。（截至目前网络版订户有1.4万。）
《纽约时报》：读者每月可免费阅读20篇文章。印刷版订户拥有免费的数字版阅读权限。数字版基本套餐一年的价格为195美元。（截至2011年底数字版付费订户有38万。）
《华尔街日报》：只有部分文章免费。只能在网上浏览的基本订阅计划是207美元一年。（截至2011年9月有537,469名数字版付费订户。）
来源：各家公司；美国发行量审计局行业高管说，这些措施与其说是增加数字订户数量，不如说是让读者不再有动力放弃订阅印刷版、去网上阅读免费内容。在电视行业，有线电视台保护业务的方法是只向已有的有线或卫星电视订户开放网上观看节目的权限。但报业的问题在于，在订户和广告收入流失多年之后才建立付费专区，是不是太迟、太无力了。

一些大报的付费专区做得很成功。《华尔街日报》从90年代中期以来便限制了部分网络内容的阅读权限。据发行审计局 (Audit Bureau of Circulations)数据，截至去年秋季，《华尔街日报》数字订户已有53.7万左右。其中约8万订户阅读的是平板电脑、智能手机或电子书阅读器上的版本，其余订户则是阅读在线版本。培生集团(Pearson PLC)旗下的《金融时报》(Financial Times)在2007年年底建立了目前的付费模式，据培生公司说，截至去年年底，该报数字订户有26.7万。

纽约时报公司(New York Times Co.)去年3月针对旗舰报纸《纽约时报》的网络阅读权限收费，迄今已有38万数字版付费订户，大约相当于每日印刷版发行量的一半。

但这些可能只是特例而非一般规律。《华尔街日报》和《金融时报》引领行业之先，并且提供专门化的商业新闻内容。据comScore Inc.数据，《纽约时报》的美国网站一开始就有每月3,000万的独立访问量。去年12月从纽约时报公司负责数字业务的高级副总裁职位退休的尼森霍茨(Martin Nisenholtz)说，这样大的访问量对于转化率来说是一个优势。

所有报纸都面临的挑战是，网上的免费内容仍旧很多。而很多报纸不能让非订户有很大的动力成为订户。多数出版机构都为现有印刷版订户提供完全的网上阅读权限，使潜在新增数字版订户相对较少。另外，很多出版机构使用“计量策略”(metered strategy)，让非订户能够免费阅读一定数量的文章。一般而言，只有10%到20%的网络读者访问网站的频率达到了需要付费才能继续阅读的程度，具体是多大比例就看门槛设置的高低。《波士顿环球报》和《Newsday》采用的是更加严格的付费专区制度。

计量策略的优势是网站流量不至于迅速下降，使网站能够留住大部分读者群和在线广告收入。

很多人说，订户数量不是关键。面向网络读者的发行成本远低于纸质版的发行成本，所以按人头算，数字版读者本身能带来的利润就更丰厚。一年花约100美元订阅《明星论坛报》数字版的1.4万读者为该报带来了约140万美元的年收入。出版人克林根史密斯(Michael Klingensmith)说，由于没有印刷成本和发行成本，这些收入转化成利润的比例更高。

与此同时，从《明星论坛报》开始为网站的完全阅读权限收费以来，点击量仅下降了12%左右。克林根史密斯说，由此，新增数字版订阅量产生的收入超过流量下降所造成损失的15倍。他说，换了我，当然会做这样的交换。

但放到行业大环境中来看，这些数字很难说引人注目。截至2011年9月份的六个月里，《明星论坛报》工作日印刷版订户比五年前同期少了10万。目前它的每日印刷版年度订阅价格约为244美元。

有一些证据表明，限制数字版阅读起到了阻止印刷版订阅量下降的作用。一年前推出计量阅读制度的《纽约时报》说，截至去年9月份的六个月里，周日发行量实现了五年以来的首次同比增长。

Gannett首席执行长马尔托雷(Gracia Martore)说，公司预计付费专区的建立将为2013年增加利润1亿美元，而在涨价的情况下，将促成该公司旗下80份正在采取付费模式的社区报纸的年度订阅收入总额增长25%。