Christian Science Monitor erects pay wall and succeeds

I think a successful pay wall model is evolving for a few daily publishers. While local papers are dying, and most of their online efforts have filed to revive business, and few more specialized publications are thriving.  One example is the Wall Street Journal. It’s arguably the best single source of business news. It’s online / print hybrid subscription model has maintained a solid subscriber base.

Another success story is the Cristian Science Monitor. The publications subscriber base has always been small, but with the implementation of a weekly print digest alone with daily online updates at a fair price ($5.75/month)  it’s readership is growing.

Reader cram points us to a paidContent post by John Yemma, the editor of The Christian Science Monitor, in which he makes a lot of great points about digital strategies for news publishing.

A year ago, we ceased publishing the daily, 100-year-old Christian Science Monitor newspaper and launched a weekly magazine to complement our website, on which we doubled down by reorienting our newsroom to be web-first. Our web traffic climbed from 6 million page views last April to 13 million in February. Our print circulation rose from 43,000 to 77,000 in the same period. This is the sort of bold move that might be the last hope for some struggling publications, and it’s also an example of CwF+RtB. Magazines still hold value to readers as an attractive physical item in a way that newspapers don’t—by connecting with fans online and then giving them a better reason to buy the print product, CSM increased the readership of both. (Techdirt)

While you can argue that the Cristian Science Monitor is a boutique periodical with a captive audience of church members, it’s also worth noting that none of that membership is compelled to subscribe by church rules.  Rather, they are compelled to subscribe by the value of what the publication offers in content that is relevant to them.

Local dailies and news mags have tended to be aggregators of content from outside sources, making them more of a distribution channel. When the Internet provided a more efficient distribution channel, the time came for them to evolve into something different. In order to find relevance, not only do they need to move online with a real time publication model. They also need to offer something compelling at a fair price.