Toronto Star Establishes Content Paywall
THUNDER BAY – Getting your online news is going to change soon for many people in Northwestern Ontario. Sun Media, The Globe and Mail, and National Post have established ‘Pay Walls’ that restrict the access to content on their websites. Now, the Toronto Star has announced it will start to charge web readers to pay for content starting August 13th.
The Toronto Star is Canada’s largest newspaper by circulation. Torstar brought company employees up to speed with details of the program yesterday, and are unveiling the new program to consumers. The Toronto Star model will ask readers to pay for full access to online content with a digital subscription to the Star.
Millions of Readers
“With over 3.1 million unique visitors monthly to our website, we want to ensure every reader is getting the content they want easily and quickly,” said Michael Cooke, editor of the Star and its website, thestar.com. “Readers will have an entirely new experience when they visit thestar.com,” Cooke said. “We’ve redesigned the website with readers in mind. Content has been reorganized for navigation ease and we’ve added new sections such as Your Toronto, Homes, Health & Wellness and Personal Finance.”
Digital Access Ten Free Monthly
The Toronto Star states, “With Digital Access, you get full access to thestar.com website: all of the articles, columnists, investigative reports, features, profiles, news, sports, blogs, slide shows and multimedia features. You receive Digital Access on any device –computer, tablet or smartphone. You also receive, every day of the week, our “Replica Edition”: a feature packed electronic version of our printed paper. Without Digital Access you will be restricted to 10 free articles on thestar.com every 30 days”.
Toronto Star Following Media Giants
Other Canadian media outlets have launched “metered” paywalls that allow readers to access a specific number of free articles each month before they’re asked to pay for further content. The Toronto Star’s parent company Torstar Corp. had started testing the paywall at other newspapers it owns.
Last year, both the Globe and Mail and National Post owner Postmedia began unrolling their own paywall structures.
On Tuesday, Torstar also ended a short-lived venture into small business media coverage, with the closure of two paywalled websites it owned.
The Toronto Star publisher, along with Torstar Corp notified staff at YourMississaugaBiz and YourHamiltonBiz that both sites would end operations effective immediately.
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