News Limited is close to unveiling its much anticipated pay wall plans, with The Australian set to become the first of its papers to introduce the model.
Rumours have been circling for weeks among agencies, and it is understood News Limited executives have spoken to selected media buyers about their intentions. It is believed the pay wall will be introduced within the next six months.
News Limited may adopt a model similar to News Corp.'s The Wall Street Journal, which utilises a freemium model that enables some articles to be accessed by non-subscribers, while other content is shuttered behind a pay wall.
The other pay wall model News Corp. has considered for The Australian is the model deployed by UK broadsheet The Times, which only allows paying customers to read articles beyond its homepage.
News Limited declined to comment.
In August of last year, AdNews flagged up the possibility of News Limited following the lead of The Wall Street Journal and UK broadsheet The Times in an interview with Nationwide News MD Michael Miller. He confirmed pay walls were on News Limited's agenda for 2011.
News Limited rival Fairfax Media is also considering pay walls for its national mastheads, but has not decided one way or the other yet. Its financial newspaper The Australian Financial Review already employs a pay wall system.
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